EDGAR  SAL 


LIBRARY  ^ 

UNIVE,  SITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


IMPERIAL  PURPLE 


By  Mr.  Saltus 

THE  PERFUME  OF  EROS 

MARY  MAGDALEN 

THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

VANITY  SQUARE 

In  preparation 

HISTORIA  AMORIS 


IMPERIAL   PURPLE 


By 

EDGAR  SALTUS 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 

MCMVI 


Copyright  j8g2  by 
Edgar  Saltus 


Copyright  igo6  by 
Mitchell  Kennerhy 


CONTENTS 

I 

That  Woman 

9 

II 

Conjectural  Rome 

24 

III 

Fabulous  Fields 

39 

IV 

The  Pursuit  of  the  Impossible 

50 

V 

Nero 

70 

VI 

The  House  of  Flavia 

95 

VII 

The  Poison  in  the  Purple 

119 

VIII 

Faustine 

141 

IX 

The  Agony 

156 

IMPERIAL  PURPLE 


THAT   WOMAN 

When  the  murder  was  done  and  the 
heralds  shouted  through  the  thick  streets 
the  passing  of  Csesar,  it  was  the  passing 
of  the  republic  they  announced,  the 
foundation  of  Imperial  Rome. 

There  was  a  hush,  then  a  riot  which 
frightened  a  senate  that  frightened  the 
world.  Csesar  was  adored.  A  man 
who  could  give  millions  away  and  sup 
on  dry  bread  was  apt  to  conquer,  not 
provinces  alone,  but  hearts.  Besides,  he 
had  begun  well  and  his  people  had  done 
their  best.  The  House  of  Julia,  to  which 
he  belonged,  descended,  he  declared, 
from  Venus.  The  ancestry  was  less 
legendary  than  typical.  Cinna  drafted 
a  law  giving  him  the  right  to  marry  as 
often  as  he  chose.  His  mistresses  were 
queens.  After  the  episodes  in  Gaul, 
9 


IMPERIAL    rURPLE 

when  he  entered  Rome  his  legions  warned 
the  citizens  to  have  an  eye  on  their  wives. 
At  seventeen  he  fascinated  pirates.  A 
shipload  of  the  latter  had  caught  him 
and  demanded  twenty  talents  ransom. 
"  Too  little,"  said  the  lad ;  "  I  will  give 
you  fifty,  and  impale  you  too,"  which  he 
did,  jesting  with  them  meanwhile,  recit- 
ing verses  of  his  own  composition,  call- 
ing them  barbarians  when  they  did  not 
applaud,  ordering  them  to  be  quiet 
when  he  wished  to  sleep,  captivating 
them  by  the  effrontery  of  his  assurance, 
and,  the  ransom  paid,  slaughtering  them 
as  he  had  promised. 

Tall,  slender,  not  handsome,  but  su- 
perb and  therewith  so  perfectly  sent 
out  that  Cicero  mistook  him  for  a  fop 
from  whom  the  republic  had  nothing  to 
fear;  splendidly  lavish,  exquisitely  gra- 
cious, he  was  bom  to  charm,  and  his 
charm  was  such  that  it  still  subsists. 
Cato  alone  was  unenthralled.  But  Cato 
was  never  pleased ;  he  laughed  but  once, 
and  all  Rome  turned  out  to  see  him;  he 
belonged  to  an  earlier  day,  to  an  aus-^ 
10 


THAT    WOINIAN 

terer,  perhaps  to  a  better  one,  and  it 
may  be  that  in  "  that  woman,"  as  he 
called  Caesar,  his  clearer  vision  discerned 
beneath  the  plumage  of  the  peacock,  the 
beak  and  talons  of  the  bird  of  prey.  For 
they  were  there,  and  needed  only  a  vote 
of  the  senate  to  batten  on  nations  of 
which  the  senate  had  never  heard.  Loan 
him  an  army,  and  "  that  woman  "  was 
to  give  geography  such  a  twist  that  to- 
day whoso  says  Caesar  says  history. 

Was  it  this  that  Cato  saw,  or  may  it 
be  that  one  of  the  oracles  which  had  not 
ceased  to  speak  had  told  him  of  that 
coming  night  when  he  was  to  take  his 
own  life,  fearful  lest  "  that  woman " 
should  overwhelm  him  with  the  magnifi- 
cence of  his  forgiveness.?  Cato  walks 
through  history,  as  he  walked  through 
the  Forum,  bare  of  foot — too  severe  to 
be  simple,  too  obstinate  to  be  generous — 
the  image  of  ancient  Rome. 

In  Cffisar  there  was  nothing  of  this. 

He  was  wholly  modern ;  dissolute  enough 

for  any  epoch,  but  possessed  of  virtues 

that  his  contemporaries  could  not  spell. 

11 


IMPERIAL    rURPLE 

A  slave  tried  to  poison  him.  Suetonius 
says  he  merely  put  the  slave  to  death. 
The  "  merely  "  is  to  the  point.  Cato 
would  have  tortured  him  first.  After 
Pharsalus  he  forgave  everyone.  When 
severe,  it  was  to  himself.  It  is  true  he 
turned  over  two  million  people  into  so 
many  dead  flies,  their  legs  in  the  air, 
creating,  as  Tacitus  has  it,  a  solitude 
which  he  described  as  Peace;  but  what 
antitheses  may  not  be  expected  in  a  man 
who,  before  the  first  century  was  begun, 
divined  the  fifth,  anH  who  in  the  Sue- 
vians — that  terrible  people  beside  whom 
no  nation  could  live — foresaw  Attila ! 

Save  in  battle  his  health  was  poor. 
He  was  epileptic,  his  strength  under- 
mined by  incessant  debauches ;  yet  let 
a  nation  fancying  him  months  away  put 
on  insurgent  airs,  and  on  that  nation  he 
descended  as  the  thunder  does.  In  his 
campaigns  time  and  again  he  overtook 
his  own  messengers.  A  phantom  in  a 
ballad  was  not  swifter  than  he.  Simul- 
taneously his  sword  flashed  in  Germany, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Adriatic,  in  that 
12 


THAT    WOMAN 

Ultima  Thule  where  the  Britons  lived. 
From  the  depths  of  Gaul  he  dominated 
Rome,  and  therewith  he  was  penetrating 
impenetrable  forests,  trailing  legions  as 
a  torch  trails  smoke,  erecting  walls  that 
a  nation  could  not  cross,  turning  soldiers 
into  marines,  infantry  into  cavalrj, 
building  roads  that  are  roads  to-daj, 
fighting  with  one  hand  and  writing  an 
epic  with  the  other,  dictating  love- 
letters,  chronicles,  dramas ;  finding  time 
to  make  a  collection  of  witticisms ;  over- 
turning thrones  while  he  decorated 
Greece;  mingling  initiate  into  orgies  of 
the  Druids,  and,  as  the  cymbals  clashed, 
coquetting  with  those  terrible  virgins 
who  awoke  the  tempest ;  not  only  con- 
quering, but  captivating,  transforming 
barbarians  into  soldiers  and  those  sol- 
diers into  senators,  submitting  three 
hundred  nations  and  ransacking  Britan- 
nia for  pearls  for  his  mistresses'  ears. 

Each  epoch  has  its  secret,  and  each 

epoch-maker   his    own.      Caesar's    secret 

lay  in  the  power  he  had  of  projecting 

a  soul  into  the  ranks  of  an  army,  of 

13 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

making  legions  and  their  leader  one. 
Disobedience  only  he  punished ;  any- 
thing else  he  forgave.  After  a  victory 
his  soldiery  did  what  they  liked.  He 
gave  them  arms,  slaves  to  burnish  them, 
women,  feasts,  sleep.  They  were  his 
comrades ;  he  called  them  so ;  he  wept 
at  the  death  of  any  of  them,  and  when 
they  were  frightened,  as  they  were  in 
Gaul  before  they  met  the  Germans,  and 
in  Africa  before  they  encountered  Juba, 
Caesar  frightened  them  still  more.  He 
permitted  no  questions,  no  making  of 
wills.  The  cowards  could  hide  where 
they  liked;  his  old  guard,  the  Tenth, 
would  do  the  work  alone;  or,  threat 
still  more  sinister,  he  would  command 
a  retreat.  Ah,  that,  never!  Fanati- 
cism returned,  the  legions  begged  to  be 
punished. 

Michelet  says  he  would  like  to  have 
seen  him  crossing  Gaul,  bareheaded,  in 
the  rain.  It  would  have  been  as  in- 
teresting, perhaps,  to  have  watched  him 
beneath  the  shade  of  the  velarium  plead- 
ing the  cause  of  Masintha  against  the 
14 


THAT    WOMAN 

Numidian  king.  Before  him  was  a  crowd 
that  covered  not  the  Forum  alone,  but 
the  steps  of  the  adjacent  temples,  the 
roofs  of  the  basilicas,  the  arches  of 
Janus,  one  that  extended  remotely  to  the 
black  walls  of  the  Curia  Hostilia  be- 
yond. And  there,  on  the  rostrum,  a 
musician  beliind  him  supplying  the  la 
from  a  flute,  the  air  filled  with  gold 
motes,  Csesar,  his  toga  becomingly  ad- 
justed, a  jewelled  hand  extended,  opened 
for  the  defence.  Presently,  when 
through  the  exercise  of  that  art  of  his 
which  Cicero  pronounced  incomparable, 
he  felt  that  the  sympathy  of  the  audi- 
ence was  won,  it  would  have  been  inter- 
esting, indeed,  to  have  heard  him  argue 
point  after  point — clearly,  brilliantly, 
wittily ;  insulting  the  plaintiff  in  poetic 
terms ;  consigning  him  gracefully  to  the 
infernal  regions ;  accentuating  a  ficti- 
tious and  harmonious  anger;  drying 
his  forehead  without  disarranging  his 
hair;  suffocating  with  the  emotions  he 
evoked;  displaying  real  tears,  and  with 
them  a  knowledge,  not  only  of  law, 
15 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

rhetoric,  philosophy,  but  of  geometry, 
astronomy,  ethics  and  the  fine  arts; 
Winding  his  hearers  with  the  corusca- 
tions of  his  erudition ;  stirring  them 
with  his  tongue,  as  with  the  point  of  a 
sword,  until,  as  though  abruptly  pos- 
sessed by  an  access  of  fury,  he  seized 
the  plaintiff  by  the  beard  and  sent  him 
spinning  like  a  leaf  which  the  wind  had 
caught. 

It  would  have  bored  no  one  either  to 
have  assisted  at  his  triumph  when  he 
returned  from  Gaul,  when  he  returned 
after  Spain,  after  Pharsalus,  when  he 
returned  from  Cleopatra's  arms. 

On  that  day  the  Via  Sacra  was  cur- 
tained with  silk.  To  the  blare  of 
twisted  bugles  there  descended  to  !it 
from  the  turning  at  the  hill  a  troop  of 
musicians  garmented  in  leather  tunics, 
bonneted  with  lions'  heads.  Behind 
them  a  hundred  bulls,  too  fat  to  be 
troublesome,  and  decked  for  death, 
bellowed  musingly  at  the  sacrifants, 
who,  naked  to  the  waist,  a  long-handled 
hammer  on  the  shoulder,  maintained 
16 


THAT    WOMAN 

them  with  colored  cords.  To  the 
rumble  of  wide  wheels  and  the  thunder 
of  spectators  the  prodigious  booty 
passed,  and  with  it  triumphs  of  war, 
vistas  of  conquered  countries,  pictures 
of  battles,  lists  of  the  vanquished,  sym- 
bols of  cities  that  no  longer  were;  a 
stretch  of  ivory  on  which  shone  three 
words,  each  beginning  with  a  V ;  images 
of  gods  disturbed,  the  Rhine,  the  Rhone, 
the  captive  Ocean  in  massive  gold;  the 
glitter  of  three  thousand  crowns  offered 
to  the  dictator  by  the  army  and  allies 
of  Rome.  Then  came  the  standards  of 
the  republic,  a  swarm  of  eagles,  the  size 
of  pigeons,  in  polished  silver  upheld  by 
lances  which  ensigns  bore,  preceding  the 
six  hundred  senators  who  marched  in 
a  body,  their  togas  bordered  with  red, 
while  to  the  din  of  incessant  insults, 
interminable  files  of  prisoners  passed, 
their  wrists  chained  to  iron  collars, 
which  held  their  heads  very  straight, 
and  to  the  rear  a  litter,  in  which 
crouched  the  Vercingetorix  of  Gaul,  a 
great  moody  giant,  his  menacing  eyes 
17 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

nearly    hidden    in    the    tangles    of    his 
tawny  hair. 

When  they  had  gone  the  street  was 
alive  with  explosions  of  brass,  aflame 
with  the  burning  red  cloaks  of  laureled 
lictors  making  way  for  the  coming  of 
CfEsar.  Four  horses,  harnessed  abreast, 
their  manes  dyed,  their  forelocks  puffed, 
drew  a  high  and  wonderfully  jewelled 
car;  and  there,  in  the  attributes  and 
attitude  of  Jupiter  Capitolinus,  Caesar 
sat,  blinking  his  tired  eyes.  His  face 
and  arms  were  painted  vermilion ;  above 
the  Tyrian  purple  of  his  toga,  above 
the  gold  work  and  palms  of  his  tunic, 
there  oscillated  a  little  ball  in  which 
there  were  charms  against  Envy.  On 
his  head  a  wreath  concealed  his  increas- 
ing baldness;  along  his  left  arm  the 
sceptre  lay ;  behind  him  a  boy  admon- 
ished him  noisily  to  remember  he  was 
man,  while  to  the  rear  for  miles  and 
miles  there  rang  the  laugh  of  trumpets, 
the  click  of  castanets,  the  shouts  of 
dancers,  the  roar  of  tlie  multitude,  the 
18 


THAT    WOMAN 

tramp  of  legions,  and  the  cry,  caught 
up  and  repeated,  "  lo!   Triomphe!  " 

Presently,  in  the  temple  of  the  god 
of  gods,  side  by  side  with  the  statue  of 
Jupiter,  Caesar  found  his  own  statue  with 
"  Caesar,  demi-god,"  at  its  base.  The 
captive  chiefs  disappeared  in  the  Tul- 
lianum,  and  a  herald  called,  "  They  have 
lived!"  Through  the  squares  jesters 
circulated,  polyglot  and  obscene ;  across 
the  Tiber,  in  an  artificial  lake,  the  flotilla 
of  Egypt  fought  against  that  of  Tyr; 
in  the  amphitheatre  there  was  a  combat 
of  soldiers,  infantry  against  cavalry, 
one  that  indemnified  those  that  had  not 
seen  the  massacres  in  Thessaly  and  in 
Spain.  There  were  public  feasts,  gifts 
to  everyone.  Tables  were  set  in  the 
Forum,  in  the  circuses  and  theatres. 
Falernian  circulated  in  amphorse,  Chios 
in  barrels.  When  the  populace  was 
gorged  there  were  the  red  feathers  to 
enable  it  to  gorge  again.  Of  the  Rome 
of  Romulus  there  was  nothing  left  save 
the  gaunt  she-wolf,  her  wide  lips  curled 
at  the  descendants  of  her  nursling. 
19 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Later,  when  in  slippered  feet  Caesar 
wandered  through  those  lovely  gardens 
of  his  that  lay  beyond  the  Tiber,  it  may 
be  that  he  recalled  a  dream  which  had 
come  to  him  as  a  lad ;  one  which  con- 
cerned the  submission  of  his  mother ;  one 
which  had  disturbed  him  until  the  sooth- 
sayers said :  "  The  mother  you  saw  is 
the  earth,  and  you  will  be  her  master." 
And  as  the  memory  of  the  dream  re- 
turned, perhaps  with  it  came  the  mem- 
ory of  the  hour  when  as  simple  quaestor 
he  had  wept  at  Gaddir  before  a  statue 
that  was  there.  Demi-god,  yes ;  he  was 
that.  More,  even;  he  was  dictator,  but 
the  dream  was  unfulfilled.  There  were 
the  depths  of  Hither  Asia,  the  mysteries 
that  lay  beyond;  there  were  the  glim- 
mering plains  of  the  Caucasus ;  there 
were  the  Vistula  and  the  Baltic;  the 
diadems  of  Cyrus  and  of  Alexander 
defying  his  ambition  yet,  and  what  were 
triumphs  and  divinity  to  one  who  would 
own  the  world! 

It  was  this  that  preoccupied  him.  The 
immensity  of  his  successes  seemed  petty 
20 


THAT    WOMAN 

and  Rome  very  small.  Heretofore  he 
had  forgiven  those  who  had  opposed 
him.  Presently  his  attitude  changed, 
and  so  subtly  that  it  was  the  more 
humiliating;  it  was  not  that  he  no 
longer  forgave,  he  disdained  to  punish. 
His  contempt  was  absolute.  The  senate 
made  his  office  of  pontifix  maximus 
hereditary  and  accorded  the  title  of  Ini- 
perator  to  his  heirs.  He  snubbed  the 
senate  and  the  honors  that  it  brought. 
The  senate  was  shocked.  Composed  of 
men  whose  fortunes  he  had  made,  the 
senate  was  not  only  shocked,  its  edu- 
cation in  ingratitude  was  complete. 
Already  there  had  been  murmurs.  Not 
content  with  disarranging  the  calendar, 
outlining  an  empire,  drafting  a  code 
while  planning  fresh  beauties,  new 
theatres,  bilingual  libraries,  larger  tem- 
ples, grander  gods,  Csesar  was  at  work 
in  the  markets,  in  the  kitchens  of  the 
gourmets,  in  the  jewel-boxes  of  the 
virgins.  Liberty,  visibly,  was  taking 
flight.  Besides,  the  power  concentrated 
in  him  might  be  so  pleasantly  distrib- 
21 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

uted.  It  was  decided  that  Caesar  was 
in  the  way.  To  put  him  out  of  it  a 
pretext  was  necessary. 

One  day  the  senate  assembled  at  his 
command.  They  were  to  sign  a  decree 
creating  liim  king.  In  order  not  to, 
Suetonius  says,  they  killed  him,  wound- 
ing each  other  in  the  effort,  for  Casar 
fought  like  the  demon  that  he  was,  de- 
sisting only  when  he  recognized  Brutus, 
to  whom,  in  Greek,  he  muttered  a  re- 
proach, and,  draping  his  toga  that  he 
might  fall  with  decency,  sank  backward. 
Ills  head  covered,  a  few  feet  from  the 
bronze  wolf  that  stood,  its  ears  pointed 
at  the  letters  S.  P.  Q.  R.  which  decorated 
a  frieze  of  the  Curia. 

Brutus  turned  to  harangue  the  sen- 
ate ;  it  had  fled.  He  went  to  the  Forum 
to  address  the  people ;  there  was  no  one. 
Rome  was  strangely  empty.  Doors 
W'Cre  barricaded,  windows  closed. 
Through  the  silent  streets  gladiators 
prowled.  Night  came,  and  with  it  whis- 
pering groups.  The  groups  thickened, 
voices  mounted.  Caesar's  will  had  been 
2? 


THAT    WOMAN 

read.  He  had  left  his  gardens  to  the 
people,  a  gift  to  every  citizen,  his  wealth 
and  power  to  his  butchers.  The  body, 
which  two  slaves  had  removed,  an  arm 
hanging  from  the  litter,  had  never  been 
as  powerfully  alive.  Caesar  reigned  then 
as  never  before.    A  mummer  mouthed : 

"  I  brought  them  life,  they  gave  me  death." 

And  willingly  would  the  mob  have  made 
Rome  the  funeral  pyre  of  their  idol.  In 
the  sky  a  comet  appeared.  It  was  his 
soul  on  its  way  to  Olympus. 


23 


II 

CONJECTURAL   ROME 

"  I  RECEIVED  Rome  in  brick ;  I  shall 
leave  it  in  marble,"  said  Augustus,  who 
was  fond  of  fine  phrases,  a  trick  he 
had  caught  from  Vergil,  And  when  he 
looked  from  his  home  on  the  Palatine 
over  the  glitter  of  the  Fonim  and  the 
glare  of  the  Capitol  to  the  new  and 
wonderful  precinct  which  extended  to 
the  Field  of  Mars,  there  was  a  stretch  of 
splendor  which  sanctioned  the  boast. 
The  city  then  was  very  vast.  The 
tourist  might  walk  in  it,  as  in  the  Lon- 
don of  to-day,  mile  after  mile,  and  at 
whatever  point  he  placed  himself,  Rome 
still  lay  beyond ;  a  Rome  quite  like  Lon- 
don— one  that  was  choked  with  mystery, 
with  gold  and  curious  crime. 

But  it  was  not  all  marble.  There 
were  green  terraces  and  porphyry  porti- 
24 


CONJECTURAL    ROIVIE 

coes  that  leaned  to  a  river  on  which  red 
galleys  passed;  there  were  theatres  in 
which  a  multitude  could  jeer  at  an  em- 
peror, and  arenas  in  which  an  emperor 
could  watch  a  multitude  die;  there  were 
bronze  doors  and  garden  roofs,  glancing 
villas  and  temples  that  defied  the  sun; 
there  were  spacious  streets,  a  Forum 
curtained  with  silk,  the  glint  and  evoca- 
tions of  triumphal  war,  the  splendor  of 
a  host  of  gods,  but  it  was  not  all  marble ; 
there  were  rents  in  the  magnificence  and 
tatters  in  the  laticlave  of  state. 

In  the  Subura,  where  at  night  women 
sat  in  high  chairs,  ogling  the  passer  with 
painted  eyes,  there  was  still  plenty  of 
brick ;  tall  tenements,  soiled  linen,  the 
odor  of  Whitechapel  and  St,  Giles.  The 
streets  were  noisy  with  match-peddlers, 
with  vendors  of  cake  and  tripe  and  coke ; 
there  were  touts  there  too,  altars  to 
unimportant  divinities,  lying  Jews  who 
dealt  in  old  clothes,  in  obscene  pictures 
and  unmentionable  wares ;  at  the  cross- 
ings there  were  thimbleriggers,  clowns 
and  jugglers,  who  made  glass  balls  ap- 
25 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

pear  and  disappear  surprisingly ;  tlicrc 
were  doorways  decorated  with  curious 
invitations,  gossipy  barber  shops,  where, 
through  the  hberahty  of  poHticians,  the 
scum  of  a  great  city  was  shaved,  curled 
and  painted  free ;  and  there  were  public 
houses,  where  vagabond  slaves  and  sex- 
less priests  drank  the  mulled  wine  of 
Crete,  supped  on  the  flesh  of  beasts 
slaughtered  in  the  arena,  or  watched  the 
Syrian  women  twist  to  the  click  of 
castanets. 

Beyond  were  gray  quadrangular 
buildings,  the  stomach  of  Rome, 
through  which,  each  noon,  ediles 
passed,  verifying  the  prices,  the  weights 
and  measures  of  the  market  men,  exam- 
ining the  fish  and  meats,  the  enormous 
cauliflowers  that  came  from  the  suburbs, 
Veronese  carrots,  Arician  pears,  stout 
thrushes,  suckling  pigs,  eggs  embedded 
in  grass,  oysters  from  Baiae,  boxes  of 
onions  and  garlic  mixed,  mountains  of 
poppies,  beans  and  fennel,  destroying 
whatever  had  ceased  to  be  fresh  and 
taxing  that  which  was. 
26 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

On  the  Via  Sacra  were  the  shops  fre- 
quented by  ladies ;  bazaars  where  silks 
and  xylons  were  to  be  had,  essences 
and  unguents,  travelling  boxes  of 
scented  wood,  switches  of  yellow  hair, 
useful  drugs  such  as  hemlock,  aconite, 
mandragora  and  cantharides ;  the  last 
thing  of  Ovid's  and  the  improper  little 
novels  that  came  from  Greece. 

On  the  Appian  Way,  through  green 
afternoons  and  pink  arcades,  fashion 
strolled.  There  wealth  passed  in  its 
chariots,  smart  young  men  that  smelt 
of  cinnamon  instead  of  war,  nobles, 
matrons,  cocottes. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  city,  beyond 
the  menagerie  of  the  Pantheon,  was  the 
Field  of  Mars,  an  open-air  gymnasium, 
where  every  form  of  exercise  was  to  be 
had,  even  to  that  simple  promenade  in 
which  the  Romans  delighted,  and  which 
in  Caesar's  camp  so  astonished  the  Ver- 
ronians  that  they  thought  the  promen- 
aders  crazy  and  offered  to  lead  them 
to  their  tents.  There  was  tennis  for 
those  who  liked  it;  racquets,  polo,  foot- 
27 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

ball,  quoits,  wrestling,  everything  apt  to 
induce  perspiration  and  prepare  for  the 
hour  when  a  gong  of  bronze  announced 
the  opening  of  the  baths — those  won- 
derful baths,  where  the  Roman,  his 
slaves  about  him,  after  pasing  through 
steam  and  water  and  the  hands  of  the 
masseur,  had  every  hair  plucked  from 
his  arms,  legs  and  armpits ;  his  flesh 
rubbed  down  with  nard,  his  limbs  pol- 
ished with  pumice;  and  then,  wrapped 
in  a  scarlet  robe,  lined  with  fur,  was 
sent  home  in  a  litter.  "  Strike  them  in 
the  face ! "  cried  Caesar  at  Pharsalus, 
when  the  young  patricians  made  their 
charge;  and  the  young  patricians,  who 
cared  more  for  their  looks  than  they  did 
for  victory,  turned  and  fled. 

It  was  to  the  Field  of  Mars  that 
Agrippa  came,  to  whom  Rome  owed  the 
Pantheon  and  the  demand  for  a  law 
which  should  inhibit  the  private  owner- 
ship of  a  masterpiece.  There,  too,  his 
eunuchs  about  him,  Mecasnas  lounged, 
companioned  by  Varus,  by  Horace  and 
the  mime  Bathylle,  all  of  whom  he  was 
28 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

accustomed  to  invite  to  that  lovely  villa 
of  liis  which  overlooked  the  blue  Sabi- 
nian  hills,  and  where  suppers  were  given 
such  as  those  which  Petronius  has  de- 
scribed so  alertly  and  so  well. 

In  the  hall  like  that  of  Mecaenas',  one 
divided  against  itself,  the  upper  half 
containing  the  couches  and  tables,  the 
other  reserved  for  the  service  and  the 
entertainments  that  follow,  the  ceiling 
was  met  by  columns,  the  walls  hidden 
by  panels  of  gems.  On  a  frieze  twelve 
pictures,  surmounted  by  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac,  represented  the  dishes  of  the 
different  months.  Beneath  the  bronze 
beds  and  silver  tables  mosaics  were  set 
in  imitation  of  food  that  had  fallen  and 
had  not  been  swept  away.  And  there, 
in  white  ungirdled  tunics,  the  head  and 
neck  circled  with  coils  of  amaranth — the 
perfume  of  which  in  opening  the  pores 
neutralizes  the  fumes  of  wine  —  the 
guests  lay,  fanned  by  boys,  whose  curly 
hair  they  used  for  napkins.  Under  the 
supervision  of  butlers  the  courses  were 
served  on  platters  so  large  that  they 
29 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

covered  the  tables ;  sows'  breasts  with 
Lybian  truffles ;  dormice  baked  in  pop- 
pies and  honey,  peacock-tongues  fla- 
vored with  cinnamon ;  oysters  stewed 
in  garum — a  sauce  made  of  the  intes- 
tines of  fish — sea-wolves  from  the  Bal- 
tic ;  sturgeons  from  Rhodes ;  fig-peckers 
from  Samos ;  African  snails ;  pale  beans 
in  pink  lard;  and  a  yellow  pig  cooked 
after  the  Troan  fashion,  from  which, 
when  carved,  hot  sausages  fell  and  live 
thrushes  flew.  Therewith  was  the  mul- 
sum,  a  cup  made  of  white  wine,  nard, 
roses,  absinthe  and  honey;  the  delicate 
sweet  wines  of  Greece ;  and  crusty  Faler- 
nian  of  the  year  six  hundred  and  tliirty- 
two.  As  the  cups  circulated,  choirs  en- 
tered, chanting  sedately  the  last  erotic 
song;  a  clown  danced  on  the  top  of  a 
ladder,  which  he  maintained  upright  as 
he  danced,  telling  meanwhile  untellable 
stories  to  the  frieze;  and  host  and 
guests,  unvocif erously,  as  good  breeding 
dictates,  chatted  through  the  pauses  of 
the  service ;  discussed  the  disadvantages 
of  death,  the  value  of  Noevian  iambics, 
30 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

the  disgrace  of  Ovid,  banished  because 
of  Livia's  eyes. 

Such  was  the  Rome  of  Augustus. 
"  Csesar,"  cried  a  mime  to  him  one  day, 
"  do  you  know  that  it  is  important  for 
you  thid  tlie  people  should  be  interested 
in  Bathylle  and  in  myself  ?  " 

The  mime  was  right.  The  sovereign 
of  Rome  was  not  the  Caesar,  nor  yet  the 
aristocracy.  The  latter  was  dead.  It 
had  been  banished  by  barbarian  sena- 
tors, by  barbarian  gods ;  it  had  died 
twice,  at  Pharsalus,  at  Philippi;  it  was 
the  people  that  was  sovereign,  and  it 
was  important  that  that  sovereign  should 
be  amused — flattered,  too,  and  fed.  For 
thirty  years  not  a  Roman  of  note  had 
died  in  his  bed ;  not  one  but  had  kept  by 
him  a  slave  who  should  kill  him  when  his 
hour  had  come;  anarchy  had  been  con- 
tinuous ;  but  now  Rome  was  at  rest  and 
its  sovereign  wished  to  laugh.  Made  up 
of  every  nation  and  every  vice,  the  uni- 
verse was  ransacked  for  its  entertain- 
ment. The  mountain  sent  its  lions,  the 
desert  giraffes ;  there  were  boas  from 
31 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

the  jungles,  bulls  from  the  plains,  and 
hippopotami  from  the  waters  of  the 
Nile.  Into  the  arenas  patricians  de- 
scended; in  the  amphitheatre  there  were 
criminals  from  Gaul;  in  the  Forum 
philosophers  from  Greece.  On  the  stage^ 
there  were  tragedies,  pantomimes  and 
farce;  there  were  races  in  the  circus, 
and  in  the  sacred  groves  girls  with  the 
Orient  in  their  eyes  and  slim  waists  that 
swayed  to  the  crotals.  For  the  thirst 
of  the  sovereign  there  were  aqueducts, 
and  for  its  hunger  Africa,  Egypt,  Sicily 
contributed  grain.  Syria  unveiled  her 
altars,  Persia  the  mystery  and  magnifi- 
cence of  her  gods. 

Such  was  Rome.  Augustus  was  less 
noteworthy ;  so  unnecessary  even  that 
every  student  must  regret  Actium,  An- 
tony's defeat,  the  passing  of  Caesar's 
dream.  For  Antony  was  made  for  con- 
quests ;  it  was  he  who,  fortune  favoring, 
might  have  given  the  world  to  Rome. 
A  splendid,  an  impudent  bandit,  first 
and  foremost  a  soldier,  calling  himself 
a  descendant  of  Hercules  whom  he  re- 
32 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

sembled;  hailed  at  Ephcsus  as  Bacchus, 
in  Egypt  as  Osiris ;  Asiatic  in  lavish- 
ness,  and  Teuton  in  his  capacity  for 
drink ;  vomiting  in  the  open  Forum,  and 
making  and  unmaking  kings ;  weaving 
with  that  viper  of  the  Nile  a  romance 
which  is  history ;  passing  initiate  into 
the  inimitable  life,  it  would  Ixave  been 
curious  to  have  watched  him  that  last 
night  when  the  silence  was  stirred  by 
the  hum  of  harps,  the  cries  of  bac- 
chantes bearing  his  tutelary  god  back 
to  the  Roman  camp,  while  he  said  fare- 
well to  love,  to  empire  and  to  life. 

Augustus  resembled  him  not  at  all. 
He  was  a  colorless  monarch;  an  em- 
peror in  everything  but  dignity,  a 
prince  in  everything  but  grace;  a  tac- 
tician, not  a  soldier;  a  superstitious 
braggart,  afraid  of  nothing  but  danger; 
seducing  women  to  learn  their  hus- 
band's secrets ;  exiling  his  daughter,  not 
because  she  had  lovers,  but  because  she 
had  other  lovers  than  himself;  exiling 
Ovid  because  of  Livia,  who  in  the  end 
poisoned  her  prince,  and  adroitly,  too; 
33 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

illiterate,  blundering  of  speech,  and 
coarse  of  manner — a  hypocrite  and  a 
comedian  in  one — so  guileful  and  yet 
so  stupid  that  while  a  credulous  mori- 
bund ordered  the  gods  to  be  thanked 
that  Augustus  survived  him,  the  people 
publicly  applied  to  him  an  epithet  which 
does  not  look  well  in  print. 

After  Philippi  and  the  suicide  of 
Brutus;  after  Actium  and  Antony's 
death,  for  the  first  time  in  ages,  the 
gates  of  the  Temple  of  Janus  were 
closed.  There  was  peace  in  the  world; 
but  it  was  the  sword  of  Caesar,  not  of 
Augustus,  that  brought  the  insurgents 
to  book.  At  each  of  the  victories  he 
was  either  asleep  or  ill.  At  the  time  of 
battle  there  was  always  some  god  warn- 
ing him  to  be  careful.  The  battle  won, 
he  was  brave  enough,  considerate  even. 
A  father  and  son  begged  for  mercy.  He 
promised  forgiveness  to  the  son  on  con- 
dition that  he  killed  his  father.  The 
son  accepted  and  did  the  work;  then  he 
had  the  son  despatched.  A  prisoner 
begged  but  for  a  grave.  "  The  vul- 
34 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

tures  will  see  to  it,"  he  answered.  When 
at  the  head  of  Cesar's  legions,  he  en- 
tered Rome  to  avenge  the  latter's  death, 
he  announced  beforehand  that  he  would 
imitate  neither  Caesar's  moderation  nor 
Sylla's  cruelty.  There  would  be  only  a 
few  proscriptions,  and  a  price — and 
what  a  price,  liberty ! — was  placed  on 
the  heads  of  hundreds  of  senators  and 
thousands  of  knights.  And  these 
people,  who  had  more  slaves  than  they 
knew  by  sight,  slaves  whom  they  tossed 
alive  to  fatten  fish,  slaves  to  whom  they 
affected  never  to  speak,  and  who  were 
crucified  did  they  so  much  as  sneeze  in 
their  presence — at  the  feet  of  these 
slaves  they  rolled,  imploring  them  not 
to  deliver  them  up.  Now  and  then  a 
slave  was  merciful ;  Augustus  never. 

Successes  such  as  these  made  him 
ambitious.  Having  vanquished  with  the 
sword,  he  tried  the  pen.  "  You  may 
grant  the  freedom  of  the  city  to  your 
barbarians,"  said  a  wit  to  him  one  day, 
"  but  not  to  your  solecisms."  Unde- 
terred he  began  a  tragedy  entitled  Ajax, 
35 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

and  discovering  his  incompetence,  gave 
it  up.  "  And  what  has  become  of 
Ajax?  "  a  parasite  asked.  "  Ajax  threw 
himself  on  a  sponge,"  replied  Augustus, 
whose  father,  it  is  to  be  regretted,  did 
not  do  likewise.  Nevertheless,  it  were 
pleasant  to  have  assisted  at  his  funeral. 

A  couch  of  ivorj  and  gold,  ten  feet 
high,  draped  with  purple,  stood  for  a 
week  in  the  atiium  of  the  palace.  With- 
in the  couch,  hidden  from  view,  the  body 
of  the  emperor  lay,  ravaged  by  poison. 
Above  was  a  statue,  recumbent,  in  wax, 
made  after  his  image  and  dressed  in  im- 
perial robes.  Near  by  a  little  slave  with 
a  big  fan  protected  the  statue  from  flies. 
Each  day  physicians  came,  gazed  at 
the  closed  wax  mouth,  and  murmured, 
"  He  is  worse."  In  the  vestibule  was  a 
pot  of  burning  ilex,  and  stretching  out 
through  the  portals  a  branch  of  cypress 
warned  the  pontiffs  from  the  contamina- 
tion of  the  sight  of  death. 

At  high  noon  on  the  seventh  day  the 
funeral  crossed  the  city.  First  were 
36 


CONJECTURAL    ROME 

the  flaming  torches ;  the  statues  of  the 
House  of  Oetavia ;  senators  in  blue ; 
knights  in  scarlet ;  magistrates ;  lictors ; 
the  pick  of  the  prastorian  guard.  Then, 
to  the  alternating  choruses  of  boys  and 
girls,  the  rotting  body  passed  down  the 
Sacred  Way.  Behind  it  Tiberius  in  a 
travelling-cloak,  his  hands  unringed, 
marched  meditating  on  the  curiosities  of 
life,  while  to  the  rear  there  straggled  a 
troop  of  dancing  satyrs,  led  by  a  mime 
dressed  in  resemblance  of  Augustus, 
whose  defects  he  caricatured,  whose 
vices  he  parodied  and  on  whom  the  surg- 
ing crowd  closed  in. 

On  the  Field  of  Mars  the  pyre  had 
been  erected,  a  great  square  structure 
of  resinous  wood,  the  interior  filled  with 
coke  and  sawdust,  the  exterior  covered 
with  illuminated  cloths,  on  which,  for 
base,  a  tower  rose,  three  storeys  high. 
Into  the  first  storey  flowers  and  per- 
fumes were  tlu*own,  into  the  second  the 
couch  was  raised,  then  a  torch  was  ap- 
plied. 

37 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

As  the  smoke  ascended  an  eagle  shot 
from  the  summit,  circled  a  moment,  and 
disappeared.  For  the  sum  of  a  million 
sesterces  a  senator  swore  that  with  the 
eagle  he  had  seen  the  emperor's  soul. 


38 


ni 

FABULOUS   FIELDS 

Mention  Tiberius,  and  the  name 
evokes  a  taciturn  tyrant,  devising  in 
the  crypts  of  a  palace  infamies  so  mon- 
strous that  to  describe  them  new  words 
were  coined. 

In  the  Borghese  collection  Tiberius 
is  rather  good-looking  than  otherwise, 
not  an  Antinous  certainly,  but  mani- 
festly a  dreamer;  one  whose  eyes  must 
have  been  almost  feline  in  their  abstrac- 
tion, and  in  the  corners  of  whose  mouth 
you  detect  pride,  no  doubt,  but  melan- 
choly as  well.  The  pride  was  congen- 
ital, the  melancholy  was  not. 

Under  Tiberius  there  was  quiet,  a 
romancer  wrote,  and  the  phrase  in  its 
significance  passed  into  legend.  Dur- 
ing the  dozen  or  more  years  that  he 
ruled  in  Rome,  his  common  sense  was 
obvious.  The  Tiber  overflowed,  the 
39 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

senate  looked  for  a  remedy  in  the  Siby- 
line  Books.  Tiberius  set  some  engineers 
to  work.  A  citizen  swore  by  Augustus 
and  swore  falsely.  The  senate  sought 
to  punish  him,  not  for  perjury  but  for 
sacrilege.  It  is  for  Augustus  to  punish, 
said  Tiberius.  The  senate  wanted  to 
name  a  month  after  him.  Tiberius  de- 
clined. "  Supposing  I  were  the  thir- 
teenth Cassar,  what  would  you  do  ? " 
For  years  he  reigned,  popular  and  ac- 
claimed, caring  the  while  notliing  for 
popularity  and  less  for  pomp.  Saga- 
cious, witty  even,  believing  perhaps  in 
little  else  than  fate  and  mathematics, 
yet  maintaining  the  institutions  of  the 
land,  striving  resolutely  for  the  best, 
outwardly  impassable  and  inwardly  mo- 
bile, he  was  a  man  and  his  patience  had 
bounds.  There  were  conspirators  in  the 
atrium,  there  was  death  in  the  courtier's 
smile;  and  finding  his  favorites  false, 
his  life  threatened,  danger  at  every  turn, 
his  conception  of  rulership  changed. 
Where  moderation  had  been  suddenly 
there  gleamed  the  axe. 
40 


FABULOUS    FIELDS 

Tacitus,  always  dramatic,  states  that 
at  the  time  terror  devastated  the  city. 
It  so  happened  that  under  the  repubhc 
there  was  a  law  against  whomso  dimin- 
ished the  majesty  of  the  people.  The 
republic  was  a  god,  one  that  had  its 
temple,  its  priests,  its  altars.  When  the 
republic  succumbed,  its  divinity  passed 
to  the  emperor;  he  became  Jupiter's 
peer,  and,  as  such,  possessed  of  a  maj- 
esty which  it  was  sacrilege  to  slight. 
Consulted  on  the  subject,  Tiberius  re- 
plied that  the  law  must  be  observed. 
Originally  instituted  in  prevention  of 
offences  against  the  public  good,  it  was 
found  to  change  into  a  crime,  a  word,  a 
gesture  or  a  look.  It  was  a  crime  to 
undress  before  a  statue  of  Augustus,  to 
mention  his  name  in  the  latrinae,  to  carry 
a  coin  with  his  image  into  a  lupanar. 
The  punishment  was  death.  Of  the 
property  of  the  accused,  a  third  went  to 
the  informer,  the  rest  to  the  state.  Then 
abruptly  terror  stalked  abroad.  No  one 
was  safe  except  the  obscure,  and  it  was 
the  obscure  that  accused.  Once  an  ac- 
41 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

cused  accused  his  accuser;  the  latter 
went  mad.  There  was  but  one  refuge — 
the  tomb.  If  the  accused  had  time  to 
kill  himself  before  he  was  tried,  his 
property  was  safe  from  seizure  and  his 
corpse  from  disgrace.  Suicide  became 
endemic  in  Rome.  Never  among  the 
rich  were  orgies  as  frenetic  as  then. 
There  was  a  breathless  chase  after  de- 
lights, which  the  summons,  "  It  is  time 
to  die,"  might  at  any  moment  interrupt. 
Tiberius  meanwliile  had  gone  from 
Rome.  It  was  then  his  legend  began. 
He  was  represented  living  at  Capri  in 
a  collection  of  twelve  villas,  each  of 
which  was  dedicated  to  a  particular 
form  of  lust,  and  there  with  the  paint- 
ings of  Parrhasius  for  stimulant  the 
satyr  lounged.  He  was  then  an  old 
man ;  his  life  had  been  passed  in  public, 
his  conduct  unreproved.  If  no  one  be- 
comes suddenly  base,  it  is  rare  for  a  man 
of  seventy  to  become  abruptly  vile. 
"  Whoso,"  Sakya  Muni  announced — 
"  whoso  discovers  that  grief  comes  from 
affection,  will  retire  into  the  jungles 
42 


FABULOUS    FIELDS 

and  there  remain."  Tiberius  had  made 
the  discovery.  The  jungles  he  selected 
were  the  gardens  by  the  sea.  And  in 
those  gardens,  gossip  represented  him 
devising  new  forms  of  old  vice.  On  the 
subject  every  doubt  is  permissible,  and 
even  otherwise,  morality  then  existed  in 
but  one  form,  one  which  the  entire  na- 
tion observed,  wholly,  absolutely;  that 
form  was  patriotism.  Chastity  was  ex- 
pected of  the  vestal,  but  of  no  one  else. 
The  matrons  had  certain  traditions  to 
maintain,  certain  appearances  to  pre- 
serve, but  otherwise  morality  was  un- 
imagined  and  matrimony  unpopular. 

When  matrimony  occurred,  divorce 
was  its  natural  consequence.  Incom- 
patibility was  sufficient  cause.  Cicero, 
who  has  given  it  to  history  that  the  best 
women  counted  the  years  not  numeric- 
ally, but  by  their  different  husbands, 
obtained  a  divorce  on  the  ground  that 
his  wife  did  not  idolize  him. 

Divorce  was  not  obligatory.  Matri- 
mony was.  According  to  a  recent  law 
whoso  at  twenty-five  was  not  married, 


IINirERIAL    PURPLE 

whoso,  divorced  or  widowed,  did  not  re- 
marry, whoso,  though  married,  was 
without  children,  was  regarded  as  a 
public  enemy  and  declared  incapable  of 
inheriting  or  of  serving  the  state.  To 
this  law,  one  of  Augustus'  stupidities 
which  presently  fell  into  disuse,  only  a 
technical  observance  was  paid.  Men 
married  just  enough  to  gain  a  position 
or  inherit  a  legacy ;  next  day  they  got  a 
divorce.  At  the  moment  of  need  a  child 
was  adopted;  the  moment  passed,  the 
child  was  disoA\Tied.  But  if  the  law  had 
little  value,  at  least  it  shows  the  condi- 
tion of  things.  Moreover,  if  in  that 
condition  Tiberius  participated,  it  was 
not  because  he  did  not  differ  from  other 
men. 

"  Ho  sempre  amato  la  solitaria  vita," 
Petrarch,  referring  to  himself,  declared, 
and  Tiberius  might  have  said  the  same 
thing.  He  was  in  love  with  solitude ; 
ill  with  efforts  for  the  unattained ;  sick 
with  the  ingratitude  of  man.  Presently 
it  was  decided  that  he  had  lived  long 
enough.  He  was  suffocated — beneath  a 
44 


FABULOUS    FIELDS 

mattress  at  that,  Caesar  had  dreamed 
of  a  universal  monarchy  of  which  lie 
should  be  king ;  he  was  murdered.  That 
dream  Avas  also  Antony's ;  he  killed  him- 
self. Cato  had  sought  the  restoration 
of  the  republic,  and  Brutus  the  attain- 
ment of  virtue ;  both  committed  suicide. 
Under  the  empire  dreamers  fared  ill. 
Tiberius  was  a  dreamer. 

In  a  palace  where  a  curious  concep- 
tion of  the  love  of  Atalanta  and  Me- 
leager  was  said  to  figure  on  the  walls, 
there  was  a  door  on  which  was  a  sign, 
imitated  from  one  that  overhung  the 
Theban  library  of  Osymandias — Phar- 
macy of  the  Soul.  It  was  there  Tiberius 
dreamed. 

On  the  ivory  shelves  were  the  philtres 
of  Parthenius,  labelled  De  Amatoriis 
Affectionibus,  the  Syharis  of  Clitony- 
mus,  the  Erotopcegnia  of  Lajvius,  the 
maxims  and  instructions  of  Elephantis, 
the  nine  books  of  Sappho.  There  also 
were  the  pathetic  adventures  of  Odatis 
and  Zariadres,  which  Chares  of  Mity- 
lene  had  given  to  the  world;  the  aston- 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Ishing  tales  of  that  early  Cinderella, 
Rliodopis ;  and  with  them  those  ro- 
mances of  Ionian  nights  by  Aristides 
of  INIilet,  which  Crassus  took  with  him 
when  he  set  out  to  subdue  the  Parthians, 
and  which,  found  in  the  booty,  were 
read  aloud  to  the  people  tJiat  they  might 
judge  the  morals  of  a  nation  that  pre- 
tended to  rule  the  world. 

Whether  such  medicaments  are  ser- 
viceable to  the  soul  is  problematic. 
Tiberius  had  other  drugs  on  the  ivory 
shelves — magic  preparations  that  trans- 
ported him  to  fabulous  fields.  There 
was  a  work  by  Hecatseus,  with  wliich  he 
could  visit  Hyperborea,  that  land  where 
happiness  was  a  birthright,  inalienable 
at  that ;  yet  a  happiness  so  sweet  that  it 
must  have  been  cloying;  for  the  people 
who  enjoyed  it,  and  with  it  the  appan- 
age of  limitless  life,  killed  themselves 
from  sheer  ennui.  Theopompus  dis- 
closed to  him  a  stranger  vista — a  con- 
tinent beyond  the  ocean — one  where 
there  were  immense  cities,  and  where  two 
rivers  flowed — the  River  of  Pleasure 
46 


FABULOUS    FIELDS 

and  the  River  of  Pain.  With  lambulus 
he  discovered  the  Fortunate  Isles,  where 
there  were  men  with  elastic  bones,  bi- 
furcated tongues ;  men  who  never  mar- 
ried, who  worshipped  the  sun,  whose 
life  was  an  uninterrupted  delight,  and 
who,  when  overtaken  by  age,  lay  on  a 
perfumed  grass  that  produced  a  volup- 
tuous death.  Evhemerus,  a  terrible 
atheist,  whose  Sacred  History  the  early 
bishops  wielded  against  polytheism  until 
they  discovered  it  was  double-edged, 
took  him  to  Panchaia,  an  island  where 
incense  grew;  where  property  was  held 
in  common ;  where  there  was  but  one  law 
— Justice,  yet  a  justice  different  from 
our  own,  one  which  Hugo  must  have  in- 
tercepted when  he  made  an  entrancing 
yet  enigmatical  apparition  exclaim: 

"  Tu  me  crois  la  Justice,  je  suis  la  Pitie." 

And  in  this  paradise  there  was  a  temple, 
and  before  it  a  column,  about  which,  in 
Panchaian  characters,  ran  a  history  of 
ancient  kings,  who,  to  the  astonishment 
47 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

of  the  tourist,  were  found  to  be  none 
other  than  the  gods  whom  the  universe 
worshipped,  and  who  in  earher  days  h;ul 
announced  themselves  divinities,  the 
better  to  rule  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
man. 

With  other  guides  Tiberius  jour- 
neyed through  lands  where  dreams  come 
true.  Aristeas  of  Proconnesus  led  him 
among  the  Arimaspi,  a  curious  people 
who  passed  their  lives  fighting  for  gold 
with  griffons  in  the  dark.  With  Isog- 
onus  he  descended  the  valley  of  Ismaus, 
where  wild  men  were,  whose  feet  turned 
inwards.  In  Albania  he  found  a  race 
with  pink  eyes  and  white  hair;  in  Sar- 
matia  another  that  ate  only  on  alter- 
nate days.  Agatharcides  took  him  to 
Libya,  and  there  introduced  him  to  the 
Psyllians,  in  whose  bodies  was  a  poison 
deadly  to  serpents,  and  who,  to  test  the 
fidelity  of  their  wives,  placed  their  chil- 
dren in  the  presence  of  snakes ;  if  the 
snakes  fled  they  knew  their  wives  were 
pur^.  Callias  took  him  further  yet,  to 
the  home  of  the  hermaphrodites ;  Nym- 
48 


FABULOUS    FIELDS 

phodorus  showed  him  a  race  of  fascin- 
ators who  used  enchanted  words.  With 
Apollonides  he  encountered  women  who 
killed  with  their  eyes  those  on  whom 
they  looked  too  long.  Megasthenes 
guided  him  to  the  Astomians,  whose 
garments  were  the  down  of  feathers, 
and  who  lived  on  the  scent  of  the  rose. 

In  his  cups  they  all  passed,  confus- 
edly, before  him;  the  hermaphrodites 
whispered  to  the  rose-breathers  the 
secrets  of  impossible  love ;  the  griffons 
bore  to  him  women  with  magical  eyes ; 
the  Albanians  danced  with  elastic  feet ; 
he  heard  the  shrill  call  of  the  Psyllians, 
luring  the  serpents  to  death;  the  col- 
umn of  Panchaia  unveiled  its  mysteries ; 
the  Hyperboreans  the  reason  of  their 
fear  of  life,  and  on  the  wings  of  the 
chimera  he  set  out  again  in  search  of 
that  continent  which  haunted  antiquity 
and  which  lay  beyond  the  sea. 


49 


IV 

THE    PUESUIT    OF   THE    IMPOSSIBLE 

"  Another  Phaethon  for  the  uni- 
verse," Tiberius  is  reported  to  have  mut- 
tered, as  he  gazed  at  his  nephew  Caius, 
nicknamed  Caligula,  who  was  to  suffo- 
cate him  with  a  mattress  and  rule  in  his 
stead. 

To  rule  is  hardly  the  expression. 
There  is  no  term  in  English  to  convey 
that  dominion  over  sea  and  sky  which  a 
Caesar  possessed,  and  which  Caligula 
was  the  earliest  to  understand.  Augus- 
tus was  the  first  magistrate  of  Rome, 
Tiberius  the  first  citizen.  Caligula  was 
the  first  emperor,  but  an  emperor  hal- 
lucinated by  the  enigma  of  his  own 
grandeur,  a  prince  for  whose  sover- 
eignty the  world  was  too  small. 

Each  epoch  has  its  secret,  sometimes 
puerile,  often  perplexing;  but  in  its 
50 


PURSUIT   OF    THE    LMPOSSIBLE 

maker  there  is  another  and  a  more  in- 
teresting one  yet.  Eliminate  Caligula, 
and  Nero,  Domitian,  Commodus,  Cara- 
calla  and  Hcliogabalus  would  never  have 
been.  It  was  he  who  gave  them  both 
raison  d'etre  and  incentive.  The  lives 
of  all  of  them  are  horrible,  yet  analyze 
the  horrible  and  you  find  the  sublime. 

Fancy  a  peak  piercing  the  heavens, 
shadowing  the  earth.  It  was  on  a  peak 
such  as  that  the  young  emperors  of  old 
Rome  balanced  themselves,  a  precipice 
on  either  side.  Did  they  look  below,  a 
vertigo  rose  to  meet  them ;  from  above 
delirium  came,  while  the  horizon,  though 
it  hemmed  the  limits  of  vision,  could  not 
mark  the  frontiers  of  their  dream.  In 
addition  there  was  the  exaltation  that 
altitudes  produce.  The  valleys  have 
their  imbeciles ;  it  is  from  mountains  the 
poet  and  madman  come.  Caligula  was 
both,  sceptred  at  that ;  and  with  what  a 
sceptre!  One  that  stretched  from  the 
Rhine  to  the  Euphrates,  dominated  a 
hundred  and  fifty  million  people;  one 
that  a  mattress  had  given  and  a  knife 
51 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

was  to  take  away ;  a  sceptre  that  lashed 
the  earth,  threatened  the  sky,  beckoned 
planets  and  ravished  the  divinity  of  the 
divine. 

To  wield  such  a  sceptre  securely  re- 
quires grace,  no  doubt,  majesty  too,  but 
certainly  strength;  the  latter  Caligula 
possessed,  but  it  was  the  feverish 
strength  of  one  who  had  fathomed  the 
unfathomable,  and  who  sought  to  make 
its  depths  his  own.  Caligula  was 
haunted  by  the  intangible.  His  sleep 
was  a  communion  with  Nature,  with 
whom  he  believed  himself  one.  At  times 
the  Ocean  talked  to  him;  at  others  the 
Earth  had  secrets  which  it  wished  to 
tell.  Again  there  was  some  matter  of 
moment  which  he  must  mention  to  the 
day,  and  he  would  wander  out  in  the 
vast  galleries  of  the  palace  and  invoke 
the  Dawn,  bidding  it  come  and  listen  to 
his  speech.  The  day  was  deaf,  but  there 
was  the  moon,  and  he  prayed  her  to 
descend  and  share  his  couch.  Luna  de- 
clined to  be  the  mistress  of  a  mortal; 
to  seduce  her  Caligula  determined  to 
become  a  god. 

52 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

Nothing  was  easier.  An  emperor  had 
but  to  open  his  veins,  and  in  an  hour  he 
was  a  divinity.  But  the  divinity  which 
Caligula  desired  was  not  of  that  kind. 
He  wished  to  be  a  god,  not  on  Olympus 
alone,  but  on  earth  as  well.  He  wished 
to  be  a  palpable,  tangible,  living  god ; 
one  that  mortals  could  see,  which  was 
more,  he  knew,  than  could  be  said  of  the 
others.  The  mere  wish  was  sufficient — 
Rome  fell  at  his  feet.  The  patent  of 
divinity  was  in  the  genuflections  of  a 
nation.  At  once  he  had  a  temple,  priests 
and  flamens.  Inexhaustible  Greece  was 
sacked  again.  The  statues  of  her  gods, 
disembarked  at  Rome,  were  decapitated, 
and  on  them  the  head  of  Caius  shone. 

Heretofore  his  dress  had  not  been 
Roman,  nor,  for  that  matter,  the  dress 
of  a  man.  On  his  wrists  were  bracelets ; 
about  his  shoulders  was  a  mantle  sewn 
with  gems ;  beneath  was  a  tunic,  and  on 
his  feet  were  the  high  white  slippers 
that  women  wore.  But  when  the  god 
came  the  costume  changed.  One  day  he 
was  Apollo,  the  nimbus  on  his  curls, 
53 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

the  Graces  at  his  side;  the  next  he  was 
Mercury,  wings  at  his  heels,  the  cadu- 
ceus  in  his  hand ;  again  he  was  Venus. 
But  it  was  as  Jupiter  Latiahs,  armed 
with  the  thunderbolt  and  decorated  with 
a  great  gold  beard,  that  he  appeared  at 
his  best. 

The  role  was  very  real  to  him.  After 
the  fashion  of  Olympians  he  became 
frankly  incestuous,  seducing  vestals, 
his  sisters  too,  and  gaining  in  boldness 
with  each  metamorphosis,  he  menaced 
the  Capitoline  Jove.  "  Prove  your 
power,"  he  cried  to  him,  "  or  fear  my 
own ! "  He  thundered  at  him  with 
machine-made  thunder,  with  lightning 
that  flashed  from  a  pan.  "  Kill  me," 
he  shouted,  "  or  I  will  kill  you !  "  Jove, 
unmoved,  must  have  moved  his  assailant, 
for  presently  Caligula  lowered  his  voice, 
whispered  in  the  old  god's  ear,  ques- 
tioned him,  meditated  on  his  answer, 
grew  perplexed,  violent  again,  and 
threatened  to  send  him  home. 

These  interviews  humanized  him.  He 
forgot  the  moon  and  mingled  with  men, 

54 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

inviting  them  to  die.  The  invitation 
being  invariably  accepted,  he  became  a 
connoisseur  in  death,  an  artist  in  blood, 
a  ruler  to  whom  cruelty  was  not  merely 
an  aid  to  government  but  an  individual 
pleasure,  and  therewith  such  a  perfect 
lover,  such  a  charming  host! 

"  Dear  heart,"  he  murmured  to  his 
mistress  Pryallis,  as  she  lay  one  night 
in  his  arms,  "  I  think  I  will  have  you 
tortured  that  you  may  tell  me  why  I 
love  you  so."  But  of  that  the  girl  saw 
no  need.  She  either  knew  the  reason  or 
invented  one,  for  presently  he  added: 
"  And  to  think  that  I  have  but  a  sign  to 
make  and  that  beautiful  head  of  yours 
is  off ! "  Musings  of  this  description 
were  so  humorous  that  one  evening  he 
explained  to  guests  whom  he  had  startled 
with  his  laughter,  that  it  was  amusing 
to  reflect  how  easily  he  could  have  all  of 
them  killed. 

But   even    to    a    god   life    is    not    an 

unmixed    delight.       Caligula    had    his 

troubles.     About  him  there  had  settled 

a  disturbing  quiet.     Rome  was  hushed, 

55 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

the  world  was  very  still.  There  was  not 
so  much  as  an  earthquake.  The  reign 
of  Augustus  had  been  marked  by  the 
defeat  of  Varus.  Under  Tiberius  a  fall- 
ing amphitheatre  had  killed  a  multitude. 
Caligula  felt  that  through  sheer  felicity 
his  own  reign  might  be  forgot.  A 
famine,  a  pest,  an  absolute  defeat,  a 
terrific  conflagration — any  prodigious 
calamity  that  should  sweep  millions 
away  and  stamp  his  own  memory  im- 
mutably on  the  chronicles  of  time,  how 
desirable  it  were !  But  there  was  noth- 
ing. The  crops  had  never  been  more 
abundant;  apart  from  the  arenas  and 
the  prisons,  the  health  of  the  empire  was 
excellent;  on  the  frontiers  not  so  much 
as  the  rumor  of  an  insurrection  could  be 
heard,  and  Nero  was  3^et  to  come. 

Perplexed,  Caligula  reflected,  and 
presently  from  Baiag  to  Puzzoli,  over  the 
waters  of  the  bay,  he  galloped  on  horse- 
back, the  cuirass  of  Alexander  glitter- 
ing on  his  breast.  The  intervening 
miles  had  been  spanned  by  a  bridge  of 
ships  and  on  them  a  road  had  been  built. 
56 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

one  of  those  roads  for  which  the  Romans 
were  famous,  a  road  like  the  Appian 
Way,  in  earth  and  stone,  bordered  by 
inns,  by  pink  arcades,  green  retreats, 
forest  reaches,  the  murmur  of  trickhng 
streams.  So  many  ships  were  anchored 
there  that  through  the  unrepleted  gran- 
aries the  fear  of  famine  stalked.  Calig- 
ula, meanwhile,  his  guests  behind  him, 
made  cavalry  charges  across  the  sea,  or 
in  a  circus-chariot  held  the  ribbons,  while 
four  white  horses,  maddened  by  swaying 
lights,  bore  him  to  the  other  shore.  At 
night  the  entire  coast  was  illuminated; 
the  bridge  was  one  great  festival,  bril- 
liant but  brief.  Caligula  had  wearied 
of  it  all.  At  a  signal  the  multitude  of 
guests  he  had  assembled  there  were 
tossed  into  the  sea. 

By  way  of  a  souvenir,  Tiberius,  whom 
he  murdered,  had  left  him  the  immensity 
of  his  treasure.  "  I  must  be  economical 
or  Caesar,"  Caligula  reflected,  and 
tipped  a  coachman  a  million,  rained  on 
the  people  a  hail  of  coin,  bathed  in 
essences,  set  before  his  guests  loaves  of 
57 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

silver,  gold  omelettes,  sausages  of  gems ; 
sailed  to  the  hum  of  harps  on  a  ship  that 
had  porticoes,  gardens,  baths,  bowers, 
spangled  sails  and  a  jewelled  prow; 
removed  a  mountain,  and  put  a  palace 
where  it  had  been ;  filled  in  a  valley  and 
erected  a  temple  on  the  top;  supplied  a 
horse  with  a  marble  home,  with  ivory 
stalls,  with  furniture  and  slaves ;  con- 
templated makings  him  consul;  made  him 
a  host  instead,  one  that  in  his  own  equine 
name  invited  the  fasliion  of  Rome  to 
sup  with  Incitatus. 

In  one  year  Tiberius'  legacy,  a  sum 
that  amounted  to  four  hundred  million 
of  our  money,  was  spent.  Caligula  had 
achieved  the  impossible ;  he  was  a  bank- 
rupt god,  an  emperor  without  a  copper. 
But  the  very  splendor  of  that  triumph 
demanded  a  climax.  If  Caligula  hesi- 
tated, no  one  knew  it.  On  the  morrow 
the  palace  of  the  Cfesars  was  turned  into 
a  lupanar,  a  little  larger,  a  little  hand- 
somer than  the  others, but  still  a  brothel, 
6ne  of  which  the  inmates  were  matrons 
of  Rome  and  the  keeper  Jupiter  Latialis. 
58 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLK 

After  that,  seemingly,  there  was  noth- 
ing save  apotheosis.  But  Caligula,  in 
the  nick  of  time,  remembered  the  ocean. 
At  the  head  of  an  army  he  crossed  Gaul, 
attacked  it,  and  returned  refreshed.  De- 
cidedly he  had  not  exhausted  every- 
thing yet.  He  recalled  Tiberius'  policy, 
and  abruptly  the  world  was  filled  again 
with  accusers  and  accused.  Gold  poured 
in  on  him,  the  earth  paid  him  tribute. 
In  a  vast  hall  he  danced  naked  on  the 
wealth  of  nations.  Once  more  he  was 
rich,  richer  than  ever;  there  were  still 
illusions  to  be  looted,  other  dreams  to 
be  pierced;  yet,  even  as  he  mused,  con- 
spirators were  abroad.  He  loosed  his 
pretorians.  "Had  Rome  but  one  head !" 
he  muttered.  "  Let  them  feel  them- 
selves die,"  he  cried  to  his  officers.  "Let 
me  be  hated,  but  let  me  be  feared." 

One  da}',  as  he  was  returning  from  the 
theatre,  the  dagger  did  its  usual  work. 
Rome  had  lost  a  genius ;  in  his  place 
there  came  an  ass. 

There  is  a  verse  in  Greek  to  the  effect 
that  the  blessed  have  children  in  three 
59 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

months.  Livia  and  Augustus  were 
blessed  in  this  pleasant  fashion.  Three 
months  after  their  marriage  a  child  was 
bom — a  miracle  which  surprised  no  one 
aware  of  their  previous  intimacy.  The 
child  became  a  man,  and  the  father  of 
Claud,  an  imbecile  whom  the  pretorians, 
after  Caligula's  death,  found  in  a  closet, 
shaking  with  fright,  and  whom  for  their 
own  protection  they  made  emperor  in 
his  stead. 

Caligula  had  been  frankly  adored; 
there  was  in  him  an  originality,  and  with 
it  a  grandeur  and  a  mad  magnificence 
that  enthralled.  Then,  too,  he  was 
young,  and  at  his  hours  what  the  French 
call  charmeur.  If  at  times  he  fright- 
ened, always  he  dazzled.  Of  course  he 
was  adored;  the  prodigal  emperors  al- 
ways were;  so  were  their  successors,  the 
wicked  popes.  Man  was  still  too  near  to 
nature  to  be  aware  of  shame,  and  infan- 
tile enough  to  care  to  be  surprised.  In 
that  was  Caligula's  charm ;  he  petted  his 
people  and  surprised  them  too.  Claud 
wearied.  Between  them  they  assimilate 
60 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

every  contradiction,  and  in  their  inco- 
herences explain  that  incomprehensible  ' 
chaos  which  was  Rome.     Caligula  jeered 
at    everybody;     everybody    jeered    at 
Claud. 

The  latter  was  a  fantastic,  vacillat- 
ing, abstracted,  cowardly  tyrant,  issu- 
ing edicts  in  regard  to  the  proper  tar- 
ring of  barrels,  and  rendering  absurd 
decrees;  declaring  liimself  to  be  of  the 
opinion  of  those  who  were  right ;  falling 
asleep  on  the  bench,  and  on  awakening 
announcing  that  he  gave  judgment  in 
favor  of  those  whose  reasons  were  the 
best;  slapped  in  the  face  by  an  irritable 
plaintiff ;  held  down  by  main  force  when 
he  wanted  to  leave;  inviting  to  supper 
those  whom  he  had  killed  before  break- 
fast; answering  the  mournful  salute  of 
the  gladiators  with  a  grotesque  Avete 
vos — ^'*  Be  it  well  too  with  you,"  a  re- 
sponse, parenthetically,  which  the  glad- 
iators construed  as  a  pardon  and  refused 
to  fight;  dowering  the  alphabet  with 
three  new  letters  which  lasted  no  longer 
than  he  did;  asserting  that  he  would 
61 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

give  centennial  games  as  often  as  he  saw 
fit;  an  emperor  whom  no  one  obeyed, 
whose  eunuchs  ruled  in  his  stead;  whose 
lackeys  dispensed  exiles,  death,  consul- 
ates and  crucifixions ;  whose  valets  in- 
sulted the  senate,  insulted  Rome,  insulted 
the  sovereign  that  ruled  the  world; 
whose  people  shared  his  consort's  couch ; 
a  slipshod  drunkard  in  a  tattered  gown 
— such  was  the  imbecile  that  succeeded 
Caligula  and  had  Messalina  for  wife. 

It  were  curious  to  have  seen  that 
woman  as  Juvenal  did,  a  veil  over  her 
3'ellow  wig,  hunting  adventures  through 
the  streets  of  Rome,  while  her  husband 
in  the  Forum  censured  the  dissoluteness 
of  citizens.  And  it  were  curious,  too,  to 
understand  whether  it  was  her  audacity 
or  his  stupidity  which  left  him  the  only 
man  in  Rome  unacquainted  with  the  pro- 
digious multiplicity  and  variety  of  her 
lovers.  History  has  its  secrets,  yet,  in 
connection  with  Messalina,  there  is  one 
that  historians  have  not  taken  the  trouble 
to  probe ;  to  them  she  has  been  an  im- 
perial strumpet.  Messalina  was  not 
62 


PURSUIT   OF    THE    IMPOSSIBLE 

that.  At  heart  she  was  probably  no 
better  and  no  worse  than  any  other  lady 
of  the  land,  but  pathologically  she  was 
an  unbalanced  person,  who  to-day  would 
be  put  through  a  course  of  treatment, 
instead  of  being  put  to  death.  When 
Claud  at  last  learned,  not  the  truth,  but 
that  some  of  her  lovers  were  conspiring 
to  get  rid  of  him,  he  was  not  indignant ; 
he  was  frightened.  The  conspirators 
were  promptly  disposed  of,  Messalina 
with  them.  Suetonius  says  that,  a  few 
days  later,  as  he  went  in  to  supper,  he 
asked  why  the  empress  did  not  appear. 

Apart  from  the  neurosis  from  which 
she  suffered,  were  it  possible  to  find  an 
excuse  for  her  conduct,  the  excuse  would 
be  Claud.  The  purple  which  made  Calig- 
ula mad,  made  him  an  idiot ;  and  when 
in  course  of  time  he  was  served  with  a 
succulent  poison,  there  must  have  been 
many  conjectures  in  Rome  as  to  what 
the  empire  would  next  produce. 

The  empire  was  extremely  fecund, 
enormously  vast.  About  Rome  extended 
an  immense  circle  of  provinces  and  cities 
63 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

that  were  wholly  hers.  Without  that 
circle  was  another,  the  sovereignty  exer- 
cised over  vassals  and  allies ;  beyond 
that,  beyond  the  Rhine  on  one  side,  were 
the  silenced  Teutons ;  beyond  the  Eu- 
phrates on  the  other,  the  hazardous  Par- 
thians,  while  remotely  to  the  north  there 
extended  tlie  enigmas  of  barbarism;  to 
the  south,  those  semi-fabulous  regions 
where  geography  ceased  to  be. 

Little  by  little,  through  the  patience 
of  a  people  that  felt  itself  eternal,  this 
immensity  had  been  assimilated  and 
fused.  A  few  fortresses  and  legions  on 
the  frontiers,  a  stretch  of  soldiery  at 
any  spot  an  invasion  might  be  feared ;  a 
little  tact,  a  maternal  solicitude,  and  that 
was  all.  Rome  governed  unarmed,  or 
perhaps  it  might  be  more  exact  to  say 
she  did  not  govern  at  all ;  she  was  the 
mistress  of  a  federation  of  realms  and 
republics  that  governed  themselves,  in 
whose  government  she  was  content,  and 
from  whom  she  exacted  little,  tribute 
merely,  and  obeisance  to  herself.  Her 
strength  was  not  in  the  sword ;  the  lion- 
64 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

ess  roared  rarely,  often  slept ;  it  was  the 
fear  smaller  beasts  had  of  her  awaken- 
ing that  made  them  docile ;  once  aroused 
those  indolent  paws  could  do  terrible 
work,  and  it  was  well  not  to  excite  them. 
When  the  Jews  threatened  to  revolt, 
Agrippa  warned  them :  "  Look  at  Rome ; 
look  at  her  well;  her  arms  are  invisible, 
her  troops  are  afar;  she  rules,  not  by 
them,  but  by  the  certainty  of  her  power. 
If  you  rebel,  the  invisible  sword  will 
flash,  and  what  can  you  do  against  Rome 
armed,  when  Rome  unarmed  frightens 
the  world?" 

The  argument  was  pertinent  and  sug- 
gestive, but  the  secret  of  Rome's  ascen- 
dency consisted  in  the  fact  that  where 
she  conquered  she  dwelt.  Wherever  the 
eagles  pounced,  Rome  multiplied  herself 
in  miniature.  In  the  army  was  the 
nation,  in  the  legion  the  city.  Where  it 
camped,  presto !  a  judgment  seat  and 
an  altar.  On  the  morrow  there  was  a 
forum;  in  a  week  there  were  paved 
avenues ;  in  a  fortnight,  temples,  porti- 
coes; in  a  month  you  felt  yourself  at 
65 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

home.  Rome  built  with  a  magic  that 
startled  as  surely  as  the  glint  of  her 
sword.  Time  and  again  the  nations 
whom  Caesar  encountered  planned  to 
eliminate  his  camp.  When  they  reached 
it  the  camp  had  vanished ;  in  its  place 
was  a  walled,  impregnable  town. 

As  the  standards  lowered  before  that 
town,  the  pomoerium  was  traced.  Within 
it  the  veteran  found  a  home,  without  it  a 
wife;  and  the  family  established,  the 
legion  that  had  conquered  the  soil  with 
the  sword,  subsisted  on  it  with  the  plow. 
Presently  there  were  priests  there,  aque- 
ducts, baths,  theatres  and  games,  all  the 
marvel  of  imperial  elegance  and  vice. 
When  the  aborigine  wandered  that  way, 
his  seduction  was  swift. 

The  enemy  that  submitted  became  a 
subject,  not  a  slave.  Rome  commanded 
only  the  free.  If  his  goods  were  taxed, 
his  goods  remained  his  own,  his  personal 
liberty  untrammelled.  His  land  had  be- 
come part  of  a  new  province,  it  is  true, 
but  provided  he  did  not  interest  himself 
in  such  matters  as  peace  and  war,  not 
66 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

only  was  he  free  to  manage  his  own  af- 
fairs, but  that  land,  were  it  at  the  utter- 
most end  of  the  earth,  might,  in  recom- 
pense of  his  fidelity,  come  to  be  regarded 
as  within  the  Italian  territory ;  as  such, 
sacred,  inviolate,  free  from  taxes,  and 
he  a  citizen  of  Rome,  senator  even, 
emperor ! 

Conquest  once  solidified,  the  rest  was 
easy.  Tattered  furs  were  replaced  by 
the  tunic  and  uncouth  idioms  by  the 
niceties  of  Latin  speech.  In  some  cases, 
where  the  speech  had  been  beaten  in 
with  the  hilt  of  the  sword,  the  accent 
was  apt  to  be  rough,  but  a  generation, 
two  at  most,  and  there  were  sweethearts 
and  swains  quoting  Horace  in  the  moon- 
light, naively  unaware  that  only  the 
verse  of  the  Greeks  could  pleasure  the 
Roman  ear. 

The  principalities  and  kingdoms  that 
of  their  own  wish  [a  wish  often  sug- 
gested, and  not  always  amicably  either] 
became  allies  of  Rome  and  mingled  their 
freedom  with  hers,  entered  into  an  al- 
liance whereby  in  return  for  Rome's 
67 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

patronage  and  protection  they  agreed 
to  have  a  proper  regard  for  the  dignity 
of  the  Roman  people  and  to  have  no 
other  friends  or  enemies  than  those  that 
were  Rome's — a  formula  exquisite  in  the 
civility  with  which  it  exacted  the  renun- 
ciation of  every  inherent  right.  A  king 
wrote  to  the  senate :  "  I  have  obeyed 
your  deputy  as  I  would  have  obeyed  a 
god."  "  And  you  have  done  wisely,"  the 
senate  answered,  a  reply  which,  in  its 
terseness,  tells  all. 

Diplomacy  and  the  plow,  such  were 
Rome's  methods.  As  for  herself  she 
fought,  she  did  not  till.  Italy,  devas- 
tated by  the  civil  wars,  was  uncultivated, 
cut  up  into  vast  unproductive  estates. 
From  one  end  to  the  other  there  was 
barely  a  trace  of  agriculture,  not  a  sign 
of  traffic.  You  met  soldiers,  cooks, 
petty  tradesmen,  gladiators,  philos- 
ophers, patricians,  market  gardeners, 
lazzaroni  and  millionaires  ;  the  merchant 
and  the  farmer,  never.  Rome's  resources 
were  in  distant  commercial  centres,  in 
taxes  and  tribute ;  her  wealth  had  come 
68 


PURSUIT   OF   THE   IMPOSSIBLE 

of  pillage  and  exaction.  Save  her 
strength,  she  had  nothing  of  her  own. 
Her  religion,  literature,  art,  philosophy, 
luxury  and  corruption,  everything  had 
come  from  abroad.  In  Greece  were  her 
artists ;  in  Africa,  Gaul  and  Spain,  her 
agriculturists;  in  Asia  herartisans.  Her 
own  breasts  were  sterile.  When  she  gave 
birth  it  was  to  a  litter  of  monsters, 
sometimes  to  a  genius,  by  accident  to  a 
poet.  She  consumed,  she  did  not  pro- 
duce.   It  was  because  of  that  she  fell. 


69 


V 

NERO 

"  Save  a  monster,  what  can  you  exs 
pect  from  Agrippina  and  myself?  " 

It  was  Domitius,  Nero's  father,  who 
made  this  ingenious  remark.  He  was 
not  a  good  man ;  he  was  not  even 
good-looking,  merely  vicious  and  rich. 
But  his  viciousness  was  benign  beside 
that  of  Agrippina,  who  poisoned  him 
when  Nero's  birth  ensured  the  heritage 
of  his  wealth. 

In  all  its  galleries  history  has  no  other 
portrait  such  as  hers.  Caligula's  sister, 
his  mistress  as  well,  exiled  by  him  and 
threatened  with  death,  her  eyes  dazzled 
and  her  nerves  unstrung  by  the  impossi- 
bilities of  that  fabulous  reign,  it  was  not 
until  Claud,  her  uncle,  recalled  her  and 
Messalina  disappeared,  that  the  empress 
awoke.  She  too,  she  determined,  would 
70 


NERO 

rule,  and  the  jus  osculi  aiding,  she  mar- 
ried out  of  hand  that  imbecile  uncle  of 
hers,  on  whose  knee  she  had  played  as  a 
child. 

The  day  of  the  wedding  a  young 
patrician,  expelled  from  the  senate, 
killed  himself.  Agrippina  had  accused 
him  of  something  not  nice,  not  because 
he  was  guilty,  nor  j'et  because  the  possi- 
bility of  the  thing  shocked  her,  but  be- 
cause he  was  betrothed  to  Octavia, 
Claud's  daughter,  who,  Agrippina  deter- 
mined, should  be  Nero's  wife.  Presently 
Caligula's  widow,  an  old  rival  of  her 
own,  a  lady  who  had  thought  she  would 
like  to  be  empress  twice,  and  whom 
Claud  had  eyed  grotesquely,  was  disen- 
cumbered of  three  million  worth  of 
emeralds,  with  which  she  heightened  her 
beauty,  and  told  very  civilly  that  it  was 
time  to  die.  So,  too,  disappeared  a  Cal- 
purina,  a  Lepida;  women  young,  rich, 
handsome,  impure,  and  as  such  danger- 
ous to  Agrippina's  peace  of  mind.  The 
legality  of  her  crimes  was  so  absolute 
that  the  mere  ownership  of  an  enviable 
71 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

object  was  a  cause  for  death.  A  senator 
had  a  villa  which  pleased  her;  he  was 
invited  to  die.  Another  had  a  pair  of 
those  odorous  murrhine  vases,  which 
Pompey  had  found  in  Armenia,  and 
which  on  their  first  appearance  set  Rome 
wild ;  he,  too,  was  invited  to  die. 

But,  though  Agrippina  dealt  in  death, 
she  dealt  in  seductions  too.  Rome,  that 
had  adored  Caligula,  promptly  fell 
under  his  sister's  sway.  There  was  a 
splendor  in  her  eyes,  which  so  many 
crimes  had  lit ;  in  her  carriage  there  was 
such  majesty,  the  pomp  with  which  she 
surrounded  herself  was  so  magnificent, 
that  Rome,  enthralled,  applauded.  Be- 
yond, on  the  Rhine,  a  city  which  Is  to- 
day Cologne,  rose  in  honor  of  her  sover- 
eignty. To  her  wishes  the  senate  was 
subservient,  to  her  indiscretions  blind. 
Claud,  who  meanwhile  had  been  wholly 
sightless,  suddenly  showed  signs  of  dis- 
cernment. A  woman,  charged  with  illicit 
commerce,  was  brought  to  his  tribunal. 
He  condemned  her,  of  course.  "  In  my 
case,"  he  explained,  "  matrimony  has 
72 


NERO 

not  been  successful,  but  the  fate  that 
destined  me  to  marry  impure  women 
destined  me  also  to  punish  them."  It 
was  then  that  Agrippina  ordered  of 
Locusta  that  famous  stew  of  poison  and 
mushrooms,  which  Nero,  in  allusion  to 
Claud's  apotheosis,  called  the  food  of 
the  gods.  The  fate  that  destined  Claud 
to  marry  Agrippina  destined  her  to  kill 
him. 

It  was  under  her  care,  between  a 
barber  and  a  ballerine,  amid  the  shame- 
lessness  of  his  stepfather's  palace,  where 
any  day  he  could  have  seen  his  mother 
beckon  indolently  to  a  centurion  and 
pointing  to  some  lover  who  had  ceased 
to  please,  make  the  gesture  which  signi- 
fied Death,  that  the  young  Enobarbus 
— Nero,  as  he  subsequently  called  him- 
self— was  trained  for  the  throne. 

He  had  entered  the  world  like  a  tiger 
cub,  feet  first;  a  circumstance  which  is 
said  to  have  disturbed  his  mother,  and 
well  it  might.  During  his  adolescence 
that  lady  made  herself  feared.  He  was 
but  seventeen  when  the  pretorians  called 
73 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

upon  him  to  rule  the  world;  and  at  the 
time  an  ingenuous  lad,  one  who  blushed 
like  Lalage,  very  readily,  particularly 
at  the  title  of  Father  of  the  Country, 
which  the  senate  was  anxious  to  give 
him ;  endowed  with  excellent  instincts, 
which  he  had  got  no  one  knew  whence; 
a  trifle  petit  maitre,  perhaps,  perfum- 
ing the  soles  of  his  feet,  and  careful 
about  the  arrangement  of  his  yellow 
curls,  but  withal  generous,  modest,  sym- 
pathetic— in  short,  a  flower  in  a  cess- 
pool, a  youth  not  over  well-fitted  to 
reign.  But  his  mother  was  there ;  as  he 
developed  so  did  his  fear  of  her,  to  such 
proportions  even  that  he  gave  certain 
orders,  and  his  mother  was  killed.  That 
duel  between  mother  and  son,  terrible  in 
its  intensity  and  unnameable  horror, 
even  the  Borgias  could  not  surpass. 
Tacitus  has  told  it,  dramatically,  as  was 
his  wont,  but  he  told  it  in  Latin,  in  which 
tongue  it  had  best  remain. 

At  that  time  the  ingenuous  lad  had 
disappeared.     The  cub  was  full-grown. 
Besides,  he  had  tasted  blood.    Octavia, 
74 


NERO 

who  with  her  brother,  Britannicus,  and 
her  sister,  Antonia,  had  been  his  pla}-^- 
mates ;  who  was  almost  his  own  sister ; 
whose  earliest  memories  interlinked  with 
his,  and  who  had  become  his  wife,  had 
been  put  to  death;  not  that  she  had 
failed  to  please,  but  because  a  ladj, 
Sabina  Poppoea,  who,  Tacitus  says, 
lacked  nothing  except  virtue,  had  de- 
clined to  be  his  mistress.  At  the  time 
Sabina  was  married.  But  divorce  was 
easy.  Sabina  got  one  at  the  bar;  Nero 
with  the  axe.  The  twain  were  then 
united.  Nero  seems  to  have  loved  her 
greatly,  a  fact,  as  Suetonius  puts  it, 
which  did  not  prevent  him  from  kicking 
her  to  death.  Already  he  had  poisoned 
Britannicus,  and  with  Octavia  decapi- 
tated and  Agrippina  gone,  of  the  im- 
perial house  there  remained  but  Antonia 
and  himself.  The  latter  he  invited  to 
marry  him;  she  declined.  He  invited 
her  to  die.  He  was  then  alone,  the  last 
of  his  race.  Monsters  never  engender. 
A  thinker  who  passed  that  way  thought 
him  right  to  have  killed  his  mother ;  her 
crime  was  in  giving  him  birth. 
75 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Therewith  he  was  popular;  more  so 
even  than  Cahgula,  who  was  a  poet,  and 
as  such  apart  from  the  crowd,  while 
Nero  was  frankly  canaille — well-mean- 
ing at  that — which  Caligula  never  was. 
During  the  early  years  of  his  reign  he 
could  not  do  good  enough.  The  glad- 
iators were  not  permitted  to  die;  he 
would  have  no  shedding  of  blood;  the 
smell  of  it  was  distasteful.  He  would 
listen  to  no  denunciations  ;  when  a  decree 
of  death  was  brought  to  him  to  sign,  he 
regretted  that  he  knew  how  to  write. 
Rome  had  never  seen  a  gentler  prince, 
nor  yet  one  more  splendidly  lavish.  The 
people  had  not  only  the  necessities  of 
life,  but  the  luxuries,  the  superfluities, 
too.  For  days  and  days  in  the  Forum 
there  was  an  incessant  shower  of  tickets 
that  were  exchangeable,  not  for  bread 
or  trivial  sums,  but  for  gems,  pictures, 
slaves,  fortunes,  ships,  villas  and  estates. 
The  creator  of  that  shower  was  bound 
to  be  adored. 

It  was  that,  no  doubt,  which  awoke 
him.     A  city  like  Rome,  one  that  had 

7e 


NERO 

over  a  million  inhabitants,  could  make  a 
terrific  noise,  and  when  that  noise  was 
applause,  the  recipient  found  it  heady. 
Nero  got  drunk  on  popularity,  and  her- 
edity aiding  where  the  prince  had  been 
emerged  the  cad,  a  poseur  that  bored,  a 
beast  that  disgusted,  a  caricature  of  the 
impossible  in  a  crimson  frame. 

"What  an  artist  the  world  is  to  lose!" 
he  exclaimed  as  he  died;  and  artist  he 
was,  but  in  the  Roman  sense;  one  that 
enveloped  in  the  same  contempt  the 
musician,  acrobat  and  actor.  It  was 
the  artist  that  played  the  flute  while 
gladiators  died  and  lovers  embraced;  it 
was  the  artist  that  entertained  the  vul- 
gar. 

As  an  artist  Nero  might  have  been  a 
card.  Fancy  the  attraction — an  em- 
peror before  the  footlights;  but  fancy 
the  boredom  also.  The  joy  at  the  an- 
nouncement of  his  first  appearance  was 
so  great  that  thanks  were  oiFered  to  the 
gods ;  and  the  verses  he  was  to  sing, 
graven  in  gold,  were  dedicated  to  the 
Capitoline  Jove.  The  joy  was  brief. 
77 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

The  exits  of  the  theatre  were  closed.  It 
was  treason  to  attempt  to  leave.  People 
pretended  to  be  dead  in  order  to  be  car- 
ried out,  and  well  they  might.  The 
star  was  a  fat  man  with  a  husky  tenorino 
voice,  who  sang  drunk  and  half-naked  to 
a  protecting  claque  of  ten  thousand 
hands. 

But  it  was  in  the  circus  that  Nero  was 
at  his  best ;  there,  no  matter  though  he 
were  last  in  the  race,  it  was  to  him  the 
palm  was  awarded,  or  rather  it  was  he 
that  awarded  the  palm  to  himself,  and 
then  quite  magnificently  shouted,  "Nero, 
Casar,  victor  in  the  race,  gives  his 
crown  to  the  People  of  Rome !  " 

On  the  stage  he  had  no  rivals,  and  by 
chance  did  one  appear,  he  was  invited 
to  die.  In  that  respect  he  was  artisti- 
cally susceptible.  When  he  turned  acro- 
bat, the  statues  of  former  victors  were 
tossed  in  the  latrinae.  Yet,  as  com- 
petitors were  needed,  and  moreover  as 
he,  singly,  could  fill  neither  a  stage  nor 
a  track,  it  was  the  nobility  of  Rome  that 
he  ordered  to  appear  with  him.  For 
78 


NERO 

that  the  nobility  never  forgave  him.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  proletariat  loved 
him  the  better.  What  greater  salve 
could  it  have  than  the  sight  of  the  con- 
querors of  the  world  entertaining  the 
conquered,  lords  amusing  their  lackeys.'' 
Greece  meanwhile  sent  him  crowns  and 
prayers ;  crowns  for  anticipated  vic- 
tories, prayers  that  he  would  come  and 
win  them.  Homage  so  delicate  was  not 
to  be  disdained.  Nero  set  forth,  an  army 
at  his  heels ;  a  legion  of  claquers,  a  phal- 
anx of  musicians,  cohorts  of  comedians, 
and  with  these  for  retinue,  through  sa- 
cred groves  that  Homer  knew,  through 
intervales  which  Hesiod  sang,  through 
a  year  of  festivals  he  wandered,  always 
victorious.  It  was  he  who  conquered  at 
Olympia;  it  was  he  who  conquered  at 
Corinth.  No  one  could  withstand  him. 
Alone  in  history  he  won  in  every  game, 
and  with  eighteen  hundred  crowns  as 
trophies  of  war  he  repeated  Cagsar's 
triumph.  In«  a  robe  immaterial  as  a 
moonbeam,  the  Olympian  wreath  on  his 
curls,  the  Isthmian  laurel  in  his  hand, 
70 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

his  army  behind  him,  the  clown  that  was 
emperor  entered  Rome.  Victims  were 
immolated  as  he  passed,  the  Via  Sacra 
was  strewn  with  saffron,  the  day  was 
rent  with  acclaiming  shouts.  Through- 
out the  empire  sacrifices  were  ordered. 
Old  people  that  lived  in  the  country 
fancied  him,  Philostratus  says,  the  con- 
queror of  new  nations,  and  sacrificed 
with  delight. 

But  if  as  artist  he  bored  everybody, 
he  was  yet  an  admirable  impresario. 
The  spectacles  he  gave  were  unique.  At 
one  which  was  held  in  the  Taurian  am- 
phitheatre it  must  have  been  delightful 
to  assist.  Fancy  eighty  thousand  people 
on  ascending  galleries,  protected  from 
the  sun  by  a  canopy  of  spangled  silk; 
an  arena  three  acres  large  carpeted  with 
sand,  cinnabar  and  borax,  and  in  that 
arena  death  in  every  form,  on  those  gal- 
leries colossal  delight. 

The  lowest  gallery,  immediately  above 

the  arena,  was  a  wide  terrace  where  the 

senate  sat.     There  were  the  dignitaries 

of  the  empire,  and  with  them  priests  in 

80 


NERO 

their  sacerdotal  robes;  vestals  in  linen, 
their  hair  arranged  in  the  six  braids  that 
were  symbolic  of  virginity ;  swarms  of 
Oriental  princes,  rainbows  of  foreign 
ambassadors ;  and  in  the  centre,  the  im- 
perial pulvinar,  an  enclosed  pavilion,  in 
which  Nero  lounged,  a  mignon  at  his 
feet. 

In  the  gallery  above  were  the  neck- 
laced  knights,  their  tunics  bordered 
with  the  augusticlave,  their  deep-blue 
cloaks  fastened  to  the  shoulder;  and 
there,  too,  in  their  wide  white  togas, 
were  the  citizens  of  Rome. 

Still  higher  the  people  sat.  In  the 
topmost  gallery  were  the  women,  and  in 
a  separate  enclosure  a  thousand  musi- 
cians answered  the  cries  of  the  multitude 
with  the  blare  and  the  laugh  of  brass. 

Beneath  the  terraces,  behind  the 
barred  doors  that  punctuated  the  marble 
wall  which  circled  the  arena,  were  Mau- 
ritian panthers  that  had  been  entrapped 
with  rotten  meat;  hippopotami  from 
Sai's,  lured  by  the  smell  of  carrots  into 
pits ;  the  rhinoceros  of  Gaul,  taken  with 
81 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

the  net ;  lions,  lassoed  in  the  deserts ; 
Lucanian  bears,  Spanish  bulls;  and,  in 
remoter  dens,  men,  unarmed, that  waited. 

By  way  of  foretaste  for  better  things, 
a  handful  of  criminals,  local  desper- 
adoes, an  impertinent  slave,  a  machinist, 
who  in  a  theatre  the  night  before  had 
missed  an  effect — ^these,  together  with  a 
negligent  usher,  were  tossed  one  after 
the  other  naked  into  the  ring,  and  bound 
to  a  scaffold  that  surmounted  a  minia- 
ture hill.  At  a  signal  the  scaffold  fell, 
the  hill  crumbled,  and  from  it  a  few 
hyenas  issued,  who  indolently  devoured 
their  prey. 

With  this  for  prelude,  the  gods 
avenged  and  justice  appeased,  a  rhinoc- 
eros ambled  that  way,  stimulated  from 
behind  by  the  point  of  a  spear;  and 
in  a  moment  the  hyenas  were  disembow- 
elled, their  legs  quivering  in  the  air. 
Throughout  the  arena  other  beasts,  tied 
together  with  long  cords,  quarrelled  in 
couples;  there  was  the  bellow  of  bulls, 
and  the  moan  of  leopards  tearing  at 
their  flesh,  a  flight  of  stags,  and  the 
long,  clean  spring  of  the  panther. 
82 


NERO 

Presently  the  arena  was  cleared,  the 
sand  reraked  and  the  Bestiarii  ad- 
vanced — ■  Sarmatians,  nourished  on 
mares'  milk;  Sicambrians,  their  hair 
done  up  in  chignons ;  horsemen  from 
Thessaly,  Ethiopian  warriors,  Parthian 
archers,  huntsmen  from  the  steppes, 
their  different  idioms  uniting  in  a  single 
cry — "  Cffisar,  we  salute  you."  The  sun- 
light, filtering  through  the  spangled 
canopy,  chequered  their  tunics  with 
burning  spots,  danced  on  their  spears 
and  helmets,  dazzled  the  spectators' 
eyes.  From  above  descended  the  caresses 
of  flutes;  the  air  was  sweet  with  per- 
fumes, alive  with  multicolored  motes ; 
the  terraces  were  parterres  of  blending 
hues,  and  into  that  splendor  a  hundred 
lions,  their  tasselled  tails  sweeping  the 
sand,  entered  obliquely. 

The  mob  of  the  Bestiarii  had  gone. 
In  the  middle  of  the  arena,  a  band  of 
Ethiopians,  armed  with  arrows,  knives 
and  spears,  knelt,  their  oiled  black 
breasts  uncovered. 

Leisurely  the  lions  turned  their  huge, 
83 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

intrepid  heads;  to  their  jowls  wide 
creases  came.  There  was  a  ghtter  of 
fangs,  a  shiver  that  moved  the  mane,  a 
flight  of  arrows,  mounting  murmurs ; 
the  crouch  of  beasts  preparing  to 
spring,  a  deafening  roar,  and,  abruptly, 
a  tumultuous  mass,  the  suddenness  of 
knives,  the  snap  of  bones,  the  cry  of  the 
agonized,  the  fury  of  beasts  transfixed, 
the  shrieks  of  the  mangled,  a  combat 
hand  to  fang,  from  which  lions  fell  back, 
their  jaws  torn  asunder,  while  others  re- 
treated, a  black  body  swaying  between 
their  terrible  teeth,  and,  insensibly,  a 
descending  quiet. 

At  once  there  was  an  eruption  of 
bellowing  elephants,  painted  and  trained 
for  slaughter,  that  trampled  on  wounded 
and  dead.  At  a  call  from  a  keeper  the 
elephants  disappeared.  There  was  a 
rush  of  mules  and  slaves;  the  carcasses 
and  corpses  vanished,  the  toilet  of  the 
ring  was  made;  then  came  a  plunge  of 
bulls,  mists  of  vapor  about  their  long, 
straight  horns,  their  anxious  eyes  di- 
lated.    Beyond  was  a  troop  of  Thes- 


NERO 

salians.  For  a  moment  the  bulls  snorted, 
pawing  the  sand  with  their  fore-feet, 
as  though  trying  to  realize  what  they 
were  doing  there.  Yet  instantly  they 
seemed  to  know,  and  with  lowered  heads, 
they  plunged  on  the  point  of  spears. 
But  no  matter,  horses  went  down  by  the 
hundred ;  and  as  the  bulls  tired  of  gorg- 
ing the  dead,  they  fought  each  other; 
fought  rancorously,  fought  until  weari- 
ness overtook  them,  and  the  surviving 
Thessalians  leaped  on  their  backs, 
twisted  their  horns,  and  threw  them 
down,  a  sword  through  their  throbbing 
throats. 

Successively  the  arena  was  occupied 
by  bears,  by  panthers,  by  dogs  trained 
for  the  chase,  by  hunters  and  hunted. 
But  the  episode  of  the  morning  was  a 
dash  of  wild  elephants,  attacked  on 
either  side;  a  moment  of  sheer  delight, 
in  which  the  hunters  were  tossed  up  on 
the  terraces,  tossed  back  again  by  the 
spectators,  and  trampled  to  death. 

With  that  for  bouquet  the  first  part 
of  the  performance  was  at  an  end.  By 
85 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

way  of  interlude,  the  ring  was  peopled 
with  acrobats,  who  flew  up  in  the  air  like 
birds,  formed  pyramids  together,  on  the 
top  of  which  little  boys  swung  and 
smiled.  There  was  a  troop  of  trained 
lions,  their  manes  gilded,  that  walked  on 
tight-ropes,  wrote  obscenities  in  Greek, 
and  danced  to  cymbals  which  one  of 
them  played.  There  were  geese-fights, 
wonderful  combats  between  dwarfs  and 
women;  a  chariot  race,  in  which  bulls, 
painted  white,  held  the  reins,  standing 
upright  while  drawn  at  full  speed;  a 
chase  of  ostriches,  and  feats  of  haute 
ecole  on  zebras  from  Madagascar. 

The  interlude  at  an  end,  the  sand  was 
reraked,  and  preceded  by  the  pomp  of 
lictors,  interminable  files  of  gladiators 
entered,  holding  their  knives  to  Nero  that 
he  might  see  that  they  were  sharp.  It 
was  then  the  eyes  of  the  vestals  lighted ; 
artistic  death  was  their  chief  est  joy,  and 
in  a  moment,  when  the  spectacle  began 
and  the  first  gladiator  fell,  above  the  din 
you  could  hear  their  cry  "  Hie  hahet!  " 
and  watch  their  delicate  thumbs  reverse. 
86 


NERO 

There  was  no  cowardice  in  that  arena. 
If  by  chance  any  hesitation  were  dis- 
cernible, instantly  there  were  hot  irons, 
the  sear  of  which  revivified  courage  at 
once.  But  that  was  rare.  The  gladia- 
tors fought  for  applause,  for  liberty, 
for  death;  fought  manfully,  skilfully, 
terribly,  too,  and  received  the  point  of 
the  sword  or  the  palm  of  the  victor,  their 
expression  unchanged,  the  face  un- 
moved. Among  them,  some  provided 
with  a  net  and  prodigiously  agile,  pur- 
sued their  adversaries  hither  and  thither, 
trying  to  entangle  them  first  and  kill 
them  later.  Others,  protected  by  oblong 
shields  and  armed  with  short,  sharp 
swords,  fought  hand-to-hand.  There 
were  still  others,  mailed  horsemen,  who 
fought  with  the  lance,  and  charioteers 
that  dealt  death  from  high  Briton  cars. 

As  a  spectacle  it  was  unique ;  one  that 
the  Romans,  or  more  exactly,  their  pre- 
decessors, the  Etruscans,  had  devised  to 
train  their  children  for  war  and  allay 
the  fear  of  blood.  It  had  been  service- 
able, indeed,  and  though  the  need  of  it 
87 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

had  gone,  still  the  institution  endured, 
and  in  enduring  constituted  the  chief 
delight  of  the  vestals  and  of  Rome.  By 
means  of  it  a  bankrupt  became  consul 
and  an  emperor  beloved.  It  had  stayed 
revolutions,  it  was  the  tax  of  the  pro- 
letariat on  the  rich.  Silver  and  bread 
were  for  the  individual,  but  these  things 
were  for  the  crowd. 

During  the  pauses  of  the  combats  the 
dead  were  removed  by  men  masked  as 
Mercury,  god  of  hell;  red  irons,  that 
others,  masked  as  Charon,  bore,  being 
first  applied  as  safeguard  against  swoon 
or  fraud.  And  when,  to  the  kisses  of 
flutes,  the  last  palm  had  been  awarded, 
the  last  death  acclaimed,  a  ballet  was 
given;  that  of  Paris  and  Venus,  which 
Apuleius  has  described  so  well,  and  for 
afterpiece  the  romance  of  Pasiphae  and 
the  bull.  Then,  as  night  descended,  so 
did  torches,  too ;  the  arena  was  strewn 
with  vermilion;  tables  were  set,  and  to 
the  incitement  of  crotals,  Lydians 
danced  before  the  multitude,  toasting 
the  last  act  of  that  wonderful  day. 
88 


NERO 

It  was  with  such  magnificence  that 
Nero  showed  the  impresario's  skill,  the 
politician's  adroitness.  Where  the  artist, 
which  he  claimed  to  be,  really  appeared, 
was  in  the  refurbishing  of  Rome. 

In  spite  of  Augustus'  boast,  the  city 
was  not  by  any  means  of  marble.  It 
was  filled  with  crooked  little  streets,  with 
the  atrocities  of  the  Tarquins,  with 
houses  unsightly  and  perilous,  with  the 
moss  and  dust  of  ages ;  it  compared  with 
Alexandria  as  London  compares  with 
Paris ;  it  had  a  splendor  of  its  own,  but 
a  splendor  that  could  be  heightened. 

Whether  the  conflagration  which  oc- 
curred at  that  time  was  the  result  of 
accident  or  design  is  uncertain  and  in 
any  event  immaterial.  Tacitus  says  that 
when  it  began  Nero  was  at  Antium,  in 
which  case  he  must  have  hastened  to 
return,  for  admitting  that  he  did  not 
originate  the  fire,  it  is  a  matter  of  agree- 
ment that  he  collaborated  in  it.  In 
quarters  where  it  showed  symptoms  of 
weakness  it  was  by  his  orders  coaxed  to 
new  strength;  colossal  stone  buildings, 
89 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

on  which  it  had  little  effect,  were  bat- 
tered down  with  catapults. 

Fire  is  a  perfect  poet.  No  designer 
ever  imagined  the  surprises  it  creates, 
and  when,  at  the  end  of  the  week,  three- 
fourths  of  the  city  was  in  ruins,  the 
beauty  that  reigned  there  must  have 
been  sublime.  That  it  inspired  Nero  is 
presumable.  The  palace  on  the  Pala- 
tine, which  Tiberius  embellished  and 
Caligula  enlarged,  had  gone;  in  its 
place  rose  another,  aflame  with  gold. 
Before  it  Neropolis  extended,  a  city  of 
triumphal  arches,  enchanted  temples, 
royal  dwellings,  shimmering  porticoes, 
glittering  roofs,  and  wide,  hospitable 
streets.  It  was  fair  to  the  eye,  purely 
Greek ;  and  on  its  heart,  from  the  Circus 
Maximus  to  the  Forum's  edge,  the  new 
and  gigantic  palace  shone.  Before  it 
was  a  lake,  a  part  of  which  Vespasian 
drained  and  replaced  with  an  amphi- 
theatre that  covered  eight  acres.  About 
that  lake  were  separate  edifices  that 
formed  a  city  in  themselves ;  between 
them  and  the  palace,  a  statue  of  Nero 
90 


NERO 

in  gold  and  silver  mounted  precipitately 
a  hundred  and  twenty  feet — a  statue 
which  it  took  twenty-four  elephants  to 
move.  About  it  were  green  savannahs, 
forest  reaches,  the  call  of  bird  and  deer, 
while  in  the  distance,  fronted  by  a 
stretch  of  columns  a  mile  in  length,  the 
palace  stood — a  palace  so  ineffably 
charming  that  on  the  day  of  reckoning 
may  it  outbalance  a  few  of  his  sins. 
Even  the  cellars  were  frescoed.  The 
baths  were  quite  comfortable;  you  had 
waters  salt  or  sulphurous  at  will.  The 
dining  halls  had  ivory  ceilings  from 
which  flowers  fell,  and  wainscots  that 
changed  at  each  service.  The  walls  were 
alive  with  the  glisten  of  gems,  with 
marbles  rarer  than  jewels.  In  one  hall 
was  a  dome  of  sapphire,  a  floor  of  mala- 
chite, crystal  columns  and  red-gold 
walls. 

"  At  last,"  Nero  murmured,  "  I  am 
lodged  like  a  man." 

No  doubt.  Yet  in  a  mirror  he  would 
have  seen  a  bloated  beast  in  a  flowered 
gown,  the  hair  done  up  in  a  chignon,  the 
91 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

skin  covered  with  eruptions,  the  eyes 
circled  and  yellow;  a  woman  who  had 
hours  when  she  imitated  a  virgin  at  bay, 
others  when  she  was  wife,  still  others 
when  she  expected  to  be  a  mother,  and 
that  woman,  a  senatorial  patent  of 
divinity  aiding,  was  god — Apollo's  peer, 
imperator,  chief  of  the  army,  pontifix 
maximus,  master  of  the  world,  with  the 
incontestable  right  of  life  and  death 
over  every  being  in  the  dominions. 

It  had  taken  the  fresh-faced  lad  who 
blushed  so  readily,  just  fourteen  years  to 
effect  that  change.  Did  he  regret  it? 
And  what  should  Nero  regret.''  Nothing, 
perhaps,  save  that  at  the  moment  when 
he  declared  himself  to  be  lodged  like  a 
man,  he  had  not  killed  himself  like  one. 
But  of  that  he  was  incapable.  Had  he 
known  what  the  future  held,  possibly  he 
might  have  imitated  that  apotheosis 
of  vulgarity  in  which  Sardanapalus 
eclipsed  himself,  but  never  could  he  have 
died  with  the  good  breeding  and  philos- 
ophy of  Cato,  for  neither  good  breed- 
ing nor  philosophy  was  in  liim.     Nero 

92 


NERO 

killed  himself  like  a  coward,  yet  that 
he  did  kill  himself,  in  no  matter  what 
fashion,  is  one  of  the  few  things  that 
can  be  said  in  his  favor. 

Those  days  differed  from  ours.  There 
were  circumstances  in  which  suicide  was 
regarded  as  the  simplest  of  duties.  Nero 
did  his  duty,  but  not  until  he  was  forced 
to  it,  and  even  then  not  until  he  had 
been  asked  several  times  whether  it  was 
so  hard  to  die.  The  empire  had  wearied 
of  him.  In  Neropolis  his  popularity 
had  gone  as  popularity  ever  does;  the 
conflagration  had  killed  it. 

Even  as  he  wandered,  lyre  in  hand,  a 
train  of  Lesbians  and  pederasts  at  his 
heels,  through  those  halls  which  had 
risen  on  the  ruins,  and  which  inexhaus- 
tible Greece  had  furnished  with  a  fresh 
crop  of  white  immortals,  the  world  re- 
belled. Afar  on  the  outskirts  of  civiliza- 
tion a  vassal,  ashamed  of  his  vassalage, 
declared  war,  not  against  Rome,  but 
against  an  emperor  that  played  the  flute. 
In  Spain,  in  Gaul,  the  legions  were 
choosing  other  chiefs.  The  provinces, 
93 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

depleted  by  imperial  exactions,  out- 
wearied  by  the  increasing  number  of 
accusers,  whose  accusations  impoverish- 
ing them  served  only  to  multiply  the 
prodigalities  of  their  Cffisar,  revolted. 

Suddenly  Nero  found  himself  alone. 
As  the  advancing  rumor  of  rebellion 
reached  him,  he  thought  of  flight ;  there 
was  no  one  that  would  accompany  him. 
He  called  to  the  pretorians ;  they  would 
not  hear.  Through  the  immensity  of  his 
palace  he  sought  one  friend.  The  doors 
would  not  open.  He  returned  to  his 
apartment ;  the  guards  had  gone.  Then 
terror  seized  him.  He  was  afraid  to  die, 
afraid  to  live,  afraid  of  his  solitude, 
afraid  of  Rome,  afraid  of  himself;  but 
what  frightened  him  most  was  that 
everyone  had  lost  their  fear  of  him.  It 
was  time  to  go,  and  a  slave  aiding,  he 
escaped  in  disguise  from  Rome,  and 
killed  himself,  reluctantly,  in  a  hovel. 

"  Quails  artifex  pereo!  "  he  is  reported 
to  have  muttered.  Say  rather,  qualis 
mcechus. 


94 


VI 

THE  HOUSE   OF  FLAVIA 

It  was  in  those  days  that  the  nebulous 
figure  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana  appeared 
and  disappeared  in  Rome.  His  speech, 
a  commingHng  of  puerility  and  charm, 
Philostratus  has  preserved.  Rumor 
had  preceded  him.  It  was  said  that  he 
knew  everything,  save  the  caresses  of 
women;  that  he  was  familiar  with  all 
languages ;  with  the  speech  of  bird  and 
beast ;  with  that  of  silence,  for  silence  is 
a  language  too;  that  he  had  prayed  in 
the  Temple  of  Jupiter  Lycoeus,  where 
men  lost  their  shadows,  their  lives  as 
well;  that  he  had  undergone  eighty 
initiations  of  Mithra;  that  he  had  per- 
plexed the  magi;  confuted  the  gym- 
nosophists;  that  he  foretold  the  future, 
healed  the  sick,  raised  the  dead;  that 
beyond  the  Himalayas  he  had  encoun- 
95 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

tered  every  species  of  ferocious  beast, 
except  the  tyrant,  and  that  it  was  to 
see  one  that  he  had  come  to  Rome. 

Nero  was  quite  free  from  prejudice. 
Apart  from  a  doll  which  he  worshipped 
he  had  no  superstitions.  He  had  the 
plain  man's  dislike  of  philosophy;  Sen- 
eca had  sickened  him  of  it,  perhaps; 
but  he  was  sensitive,  not  that  he  troubled 
himself  particularly  about  any  lies  that 
were  told  of  him,  but  he  did  object  to 
people  who  went  about  telling  the  truth. 
In  that  respect  he  was  not  unique;  we 
are  all  like  him,  but  he  had  ways  of 
stilling  the  truth  which  were  imperial 
and  his  own. 

Promptly  on  ApoUonius  he  loosed  his 
bull-dog,  Tigellin,  prefect  of  police. 

Tigellin  caught  him.  "  What  have 
you  with  you.'*  "  he  asked. 

"  Continence,  Justice,  Temperance, 
Strength  and  Patience,"  ApoUonius 
answered. 

"  Your  slaves,  I  suppose.  Make  out 
a  list  of  them." 

ApoUonius  shook  his  head.  "  They 
96 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

are  not  my  slaves ;  they  are  my  mas- 
ters." 

"  There  is  but  one,"  TigeDin  retorted 
— "  Nero.    Why  do  you  not  fear  him  ?  " 

"  Because  the  god  that  made  him 
terrible  made  me  without  fear." 

"  I  will  leave  you  your  liberty,"  mut- 
tered the  startled  Tigellin,  "  but  you 
must  give  bail." 

"  And  who,"  asked  ApoUonius  su- 
perbly, "  would  bail  a  man  whom  no 
one  can  enchain  ?  "  Therewith  he  turned 
and  disappeared. 

At  that  time  Nero  was  in  training  to 
suffocate  a  lion  in  the  arena.  A  few 
days  later  he  killed  himself.  Simultane- 
ously there  came  news  from  Syracuse. 
A  woman  of  rank  had  given  birth  to  a 
child  with  three  heads.  ApoUonius  ex- 
amined it. 

"  There  will  be  three  emperors  at 
once,"  he  announced.  "  But  their  reign 
will  be  shorter  than  that  of  kings  on  the 
stage." 

Within  that  year  Galba,  who  was 
emperor  for  an  instant,  died  at  the  gates 
97 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

of  Rome.  Vitcllius,  after  being  emperor 
in  little  else  than  dream,  was  butchered 
in  the  Forum;  and  Otho,  in  that  fine 
antique  fashion,  killed  himself  in  Gaul. 
Apollonius  meanwhile  was  in  Alexandria, 
predicting  the  purple  to  Vespasian,  the 
rise  of  the  House  of  Flavia;  invoking 
Jupiter  in  his  protege's  behalf;  and 
presently,  the  prediction  accomplished, 
he  was  back  in  Rome,  threatening  Domi- 
tian,  warning  him  that  the  House  of 
Flavia  would  fall. 

The  atmosphere  was  then  charged 
with  the  marvellous ;  the  world  was  filled 
with  prodigies,  with  strange  gods,  beck- 
oning chimeras  and  credulous  crowds. 
Belief  in  the  supernatural  was  absolute ; 
the  occult  sciences,  astrology,  magic, 
divination,  all  had  their  adepts.  In 
Greece  there  were  oracles  at  every  turn, 
and  with  them  prophets  who  taught  the 
art  of  adultery  and  how  to  construe  the 
past.  On  the  banks  of  the  Rhine  there 
were  girls  who  were  regarded  as  divin- 
ities, and  in  Gaul  were  men  who  were 
held  wholly  divine. 

98 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

Jerusalem  too  had  her  follies.  There 
was  Simon  the  Magician,  founder  of 
gnosticism,  father  of  every  heresy, 
Messiah  to  the  Jews,  Jupiter  to  the 
Gentiles — an  impudent  self-made  god, 
who  pretended  to  float  in  the  air,  and 
called  his  mistress  Minerva — a  deifica- 
tion, parenthetically,  which  was  ac- 
cepted by  Nicholas,  his  successor,  a 
deacon  of  the  church,  who  raised  her  to 
the  eighth  heaven  as  patron  saint  of 
lust.  To  him,  as  to  Simon,  she  was 
Ennoia,  Prunikos,  Helen  of  Troy.  She 
had  been  Delilah,  Lucretia.  She  had 
prostituted  herself  to  every  nation;  she 
had  sung  in  the  by-ways,  and  hidden 
robbers  in  the  vermin  of  her  bed.  But 
by  Simon  she  was  rehabilitated.  It  was 
she,  no  doubt,  of  whom  Caligula  thought 
when  he  beckoned  to  the  moon.  In 
Rome  she  had  her  statue,  and  near  it  was 
one  to  Simon,  the  holy  god. 

But  of  all  manifestations  of  divinity 

the  most  patent  was  that  which  haloed 

Vespasian.     He  expected  it,  Suetonius 

says,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  any  one  else 

99 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

did.  One  night  he  dreamed  that  an  era 
of  prosperity  was  to  dawn  for  him  and 
his  when  Nero  lost  a  tooth.  The  next 
day  he  was  shown  one  which  had  been 
drawn  from  the  emperor's  mouth.  But 
that  was  nothing.  Presently  at  Carmel 
the  Syrian  oracle  assured  him  that  he 
would  be  successful  in  whatever  he 
undertook.  From  Rome  word  came 
that,  while  the  armies  of  Vitellius  and 
Otho  were  fighting,  two  eagles  had 
fought  above  them,  and  that  the  victor 
had  been  despatched  by  a  third  eagle 
that  had  come  from  the  East.  In  Alex- 
andria Serapis  whispered  to  him.  The 
entire  menagerie  of  Egypt  proclaimed 
him  king.  Apis  bellowed,  Anubis 
barked.  Isis  visited  him  unveiled.  The 
lame  and  the  blind  pressed  about  him; 
he  cured  them  with  a  touch.  There 
could  be  no  reasonable  doubt  now ;  surely 
he  was  a  god.  On  his  shoulders  Apol- 
lonius  threw  the  purple,  and  Vespasian 
set  out  for  Rome. 

His  antecedents  were  less  propitious. 
The  descendant  of  an  obscure  centurion, 
100 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

he  had  been  a  veterinary  surgeon ;  then, 
having  got  Cahgula's  ear,  he  flattered 
it  abominably.  CaKgula  disposed  of,  he 
flattered  Claud,  or  what  amounted  to  the 
same  thing,  Narcissus,  Claud's  chamber- 
lain. Through  the  influence  of  the 
latter  he  became  a  lieutenant,  fought  on 
remote  frontiers — fought  well,  too — so 
well  even  that,  Narcissus  gone,  he  felt 
Agrippina  watching  him,  and  knowing 
the  jealousy  of  her  eyes,  prudently  kept 
quiet  until  that  lady  did. 

With  Nero  he  promenaded  through 
Greece — sat  at  the  Olympian  games  and 
fell  aslpep  when  his  emperor  sang. 
Treason  of  that  high  nature — sacrilege, 
rather,  for  Nero  was  then  a  god — might 
have  been  overlooked,  had  it  occurred 
but  once,  for  Nero  could  be  magnani- 
mous when  he  chose.  But  it  always 
occurred.  To  Nero's  tremolo  invariably 
came  the  accompaniment  of  Vespasian's 
snore.  He  was  dreaming  of  that  tooth, 
no  doubt.  "  I  am  not  a  soporific,  am 
I  ?  "  Nero  gnashed  at  him,  and  sent  the 
blasphemer  rwrj. 

101 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

For  a  while  Vespasian  lived  in  con- 
stant expectation  of  some  civil  message 
inviting  him  to  die.  Finally  it  came, 
only  he  was  invited  to  die  at  the  head  of 
an  army  which  Nero  had  projected 
against  seditious  Jews.  When  he  re- 
turned, leaving  his  son  Titus  to  attend 
to  Jerusalem,  it  was  as  emperor. 

Only  a  moment  before  Vitellius  had 
been  disposed  of.  That  curious  glutton, 
whom  the  Rhenish  legions  had  chosen 
because  of  his  coarse  familiarity,  would 
willingly  have  fled  had  the  soldiery  let 
him.  But  not  at  all;  they  wanted  a 
prince  of  their  own  manufacture.  They 
knew  nothing  of  Vespasian,  cared  less; 
and  into  the  Capitol  they  chased  the 
latter's  partisans,  his  son  Domitian  as 
well.  The  besieged  defended  themselves 
with  masterpieces,  with  sacred  urns,  the 
statues  of  gods,  the  pedestals  of  divin- 
ities. Suddenly  the  Capitol  was  aflame. 
Simultaneously  Vespasian's  advance 
guard  beat  at  the  gates.  The  besiegers 
turned,  the  mob  was  with  them,  and  to- 
gether they  fought,  first  at  the  gates, 
102 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

then  in  the  streets,  in  the  Forum,  re- 
treating always,  but  like  lions,  their 
face  to  the  foe.  The  volatile  mob, 
noting  the  retreat,  turned  from  com- 
batant into  spectator.  Let  the  soldiers 
fight ;  it  was  their  duty,  not  theirs ;  and, 
as  the  struggle  continued,  from  roof 
and  window  they  eyed  it  with  that 
artistic  delight  which  the  arena  had 
developed,  applauding  the  clever  thrusts, 
abusing  the  vanquished,  robbing  the 
dead,  and  therewith  pillaging  the  wine- 
shops, crowding  the  lupanars.  During 
the  orgy,  Vitellius  was  stabbed.  The 
Flavians  had  won  the  day,  the  empire 
was  Vespasian's. 

The  use  he  made  of  it  was  very 
modest.  In  spite  of  his  manifest  divin- 
ity he  had  nothing  in  common  with  the 
Caesars  that  had  gone  before ;  he  had  no 
dreams  of  the  impossible,  no  desire  to 
frighten  Jupiter  or  seduce  the  moon. 
He  was  a  plain  man,  tall  and  ruddy, 
very  coarse  in  speech  and  thought,  open- 
armed  and  close-fisted,  slapping  sena- 
tors on  the  back  and  keeping  a  sharp 
103 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

eye  on  the  coppers ;  taxing  the  latrinae, 
and  declaring  that  money  had  no  smell; 
yet  still,  in  comparison  with  Claud  and 
Nero,  almost  the  ideal;  absolutely  unin- 
teresting also,  yet  doing  what  good  he 
could ;  effacing  at  once  the  traces  of 
the  civil  war,  rebuilding  the  Capitol, 
calming  the  people,  protecting  the  prov- 
inces, restoring  to  Rome  the  gardens 
of  Nero,  clipping  the  wings  of  the 
Palace  of  Gold,  throwing  open  again 
the  Via  Sacra,  over  which  the  Palace  had 
spread;  draining  the  lake  that  had 
shimmered  before  it,  and  erecting  the 
Colosseum  in  its  place. 

In  spite  of  Serapsis,  Anubis  and  Isis, 
he  had  not  the  faintest  odor  of  myth 
about  him;  absolutely  bourgeois,  he 
lacked  even  that  atmosphere  of  bur- 
lesque that  surrounded  Claud ;  he  was 
not  even  vicious.  But  he  was  a  soldier,  a 
brave  one;  and  if,  with  the  acquired 
economy  of  a  subaltern  who  has  been 
obliged  to  live  on  his  pay,  he  kept  his 
purse-strings  tight,  they  were  loose 
enough  if  a  friend  were  in  need,  and  he 
104 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLA  VIA 

paid  no  one  the  compliment  of  a  He.  He 
was  projected  sheer  out  of  the  republic. 
The  better  part  of  his  life  had  been 
'passed  under  arms ;  the  delicate  sen- 
suality of  Rome  was  foreign  to  him.  It 
was  there  that  Domitian  had  lived. 

It  were  interesting  to  have  watched 
that  young  man  killing  flies  by  the  hour, 
while  he  meditated  on  the  atrocities  he 
was  to  commit — atrocities  so  numberless 
and  needless  that  in  the  red  halls  of  the 
Caesars  he  has  left  a  portrait  which  is 
unique.  Slender,  graceful,  handsome,  as 
were  all  the  young  emperors  of  old 
Rome,  his  blue,  troubled  eyes  took 
pleasure,  if  at  all,  only  in  the  sight  of 
blood. 

In  accordance  with  the  fashion  which 
Caligula  and  Nero  had  set,  Domitian's 
earliest  manners  were  those  of  an  urbane 
and  gentle  prince.  Later,  when  he  made 
it  his  turn  to  rule,  informers  begged 
their  bread  in  exile.  Where  they  are 
not  punished,  he  announced,  they  are  en- 
couraged. The  sacrifices  were  so  dis- 
tressing to  him  that  he  forbade  the 
X05 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

immolation  of  oxen.  He  was  disinter- 
ested, too,  refusing  legacies  when  the 
testator  left  nearer  heirs,  and  therewith 
royally  generous,  covering  his  suite  with 
presents,  and  declaring  that  to  him 
avarice  of  all  vices  was  the  lowest  and 
most  vile.  In  short,  you  would  have  said 
another  adolescent  Nero  come  to  Rome ; 
there  was  the  same  silken  sweetness  of 
demeanor,  the  same  ready  blush,  in  ad- 
dition to  a  zeal  for  justice  and  equity 
which  other  young  emperors  had  been 
too  thoughtless  to  show. 

His  boyhood,  too,  had  not  been  above 
reproach.  The  same  things  were  whis- 
pered about  him  that  had  been  shouted 
at  Augustus.  Manifestly  he  lacked  not 
one  of  the  qualities  which  go  to  the 
making  of  a  model  prince.  Vespasian 
alone  had  his  doubts. 

"  Mushrooms  won't  hurt  you,"  he 
cried  one  day,  as  Domitian  started  at 
the  sight  of  a  ragout  a  la  Sardanapale, 
which  he  fancied,  possibly,  was  a  la  Lo- 
custe.    "  It  is  steel  you  should  fear." 

At  that  time,  with  a  father  for  em- 
J06 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

peror  and  a  brother  who  was  sacking 
Jerusalem,  Domitian  had  but  one  cause 
for  anxiety,  to  wit — that  the  empire 
might  escape  him.  It  was  then  he  began 
his  meditations  over  holocausts  of  flies. 
For  hours  he  secluded  himself,  occupied 
solely  with  their  slaughter.  He  treated 
them  precisely  as  Titus  treated  the 
Jews,  enjoying  the  quiver  of  their  legs, 
the  little  agonies  of  their  silent  death. 

Tiberius  had  been  in  love  with  soli- 
tude, but  never  as  he.  Night  after  night 
he  wandered  on  the  terraces  of  the 
palace,  watching  the  red  moon  wane 
white,  companioned  only  by  his  dreams, 
those  waking  dreams  that  poets  and 
madmen  share,  that  Pallas  had  him  in 
her  charge,  that  Psyche  was  amorous  of 
his  eyes. 

Meanwhile  he  was  a  nobody,  a  young 
gentleman  merely,  who  might  have 
moved  in  the  best  society,  and  who  pre- 
ferred the  worst — his  own.  The  sudden 
elevation  of  Vespasian  preoccupied  him, 
and  while  he  knew  that  in  the  natural 
course  of  events  his  father  would  move 
107 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE' 

to  Oljmpus,  jet  there  was  his  brother 
Titus,  on  whose  broad  shoulders  the 
mantle  of  purple  would  fall.  If  the 
seditious  Jews  only  knew  their  business ! 
But  no.  Forty  years  before  a  white 
apparition  on  the  way  to  Golgotha  had 
cried  to  a  handful  of  women,  "  The  days 
are  coming  in  which  they  shall  say  to  the 
mountains,  '  Fall  on  us  ' ;  to  the  hills, 
'  Cover  us.'  "  And  the  days  had  come. 
A  million  of  them  had  been  butchered. 
From  the  country  they  had  fled  to  the 
city;  from  Acra  they  had  climbed  to 
Zion.  When  the  city  burst  into  flames 
their  blood  put  it  out.  Decidedly  they 
did  not  know  their  business.  Titus,  in- 
stead of  being  stabbed  before  Jerusa- 
lem's walls,  was  marching  in  triumph  to 
Rome. 

The  procession  that  presently  entered 
the  gates  was  a  stream  of  splendor; 
crowns  of  rubies  and  gold;  garments 
that  glistened  with  gems ;  gods  on  their 
sacred  pedestals ;  prisoners ;  curious 
beasts ;  Jerusalem  in  miniature ;  pictures 
of  war;  booty  from  the  Temple,  the 
108 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

veil,  the  candelabra,  the  cups  of  gold  and 
the  Book  of  the  Law.  To  the  rear 
rumbled  the  triumphal  car,  in  which 
laurelled  and  mantled  Titus  stood,  Ves- 
pasian at  his  side ;  while,  in  the  distance, 
on  horseback,  came  Domitian — a  super- 
numerary, ignored  by  the  crowd. 

When  the  prisoners  disappeared  in 
the  Tullianum  and  a  herald  shouted, 
"  They  have  lived !  "  Domitian  returned 
to  the  palace  and  hunted  morosely  for 
flies.  The  excesses  of  the  festival  in 
which  Rome  was  swooning  then  had  no 
delights  for  him.  Presently  the  moon 
would  rise,  and  then  on  the  deserted  ter- 
race perhaps  he  would  bathe  a  little  in 
her  light,  and  dream  again  of  Pallas 
and  of  the  possibilities  of  an  emperor's 
sway,  but  meanwhile  those  blue  troubled 
eyes  that  Psyche  was  amorous  of  were 
filled  with  envy  and  with  hate.  It  was 
not  that  he  begrudged  Titus  the  tri- 
umph. The  man  who  had  disposed  of 
a  million  Jews  deserved  not  one  triumph, 
but  ten.  It  was  the  purple  that  haunted 
him. 

109 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Doimtian  was  thc;i  in  the  early 
twenties.  The  Temple  of  Peace  was 
ascending;  the  Temple  of  Janus  was 
closed ;  the  empire  was  at  rest.  Side  by 
side  with  Vespasian,  Titus  ruled.  From 
the  Euphrates  came  the  rumor  of  some 
vague  revolt.  Domitian  thought  he 
would  like  to  quell  it.  He  was  requested 
to  keep  quiet.  It  occurred  to  him  that 
his  father  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  him- 
self to  reign  so  long.  He  was  requested 
to  vacate  his  apartment.  There  were 
dumb  plots  in  dark  cellars,  of  which  only 
the  echo  of  a  whisper  has  descended  to 
us,  but  which  at  the  time  were  quite  loud 
enough  to  reach  Vespasian's  ears.  Titus 
interceded.  Domitian  was  requested  to 
behave. 

For  a  while  he  prowled  in  the  moon- 
light. He  had  been  too  precipitate,  he 
decided,  and  to  allay  suspicion  presently 
he  went  about  in  society,  mingling  his 
hours  with  those  of  married  women. 
Manifestly  his  ways  had  mended.  But 
Vespasian  was  uneasy.  A  comet  had 
appeared.  The  doors  of  the  imperial 
110 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

mausoleum  had  opened  of  themselves, 
besides,  he  was  not  well.  The  robust 
and  hardy  soldier,  suddenly  without 
tangible  cause,  felt  his  strength  give 
way.  "  It  is  nothing,"  his  physician 
said;  "a  slight  attack  of  fever."  Ves- 
pasian shook  his  head;  he  knew  things 
of  which  the  physician  was  ignorant. 
"  It  is  death,"  he  answered,  "  and  an 
emperor  should  meet  it  standing." 

Titus'  turn  came  next.  A  violent, 
headstrong,  handsome,  rapacious  prince, 
terribly  prodigal,  thoroughly  Oriental, 
surrounded  by  dancers  and  mignons, 
living  in  state  with  a  queen  for  mistress, 
startling  even  Rome  with  the  uproar  of 
his  debauches — no  sooner  was  Vespasian 
gone  than  presto !  the  queen  went  home, 
the  dancers  disappeared,  the  debauches 
ceased,  and  a  ruler  appeared  who  de- 
clared he  had  lost  a  day  that  a  good 
action  had  not  marked;  a  ruler  who 
could  announce  that  no  one  should  leave 
his  presence  depressed. 

Though  Vespasian  had  gone,  his  reign 
continued.  Not  long,  it  is  true,  and 
111 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

punctuated  by  a  spectacle  of  which 
Caligula,  for  all  his  poetry,  had  not 
dreamed — the  burial  of  Pompeii.  But  a 
reign  which,  while  it  lasted,  was  fastidi- 
ous and  refined,  and  during  which,  again 
and  again,  Titus,  who  commanded  death 
and  whom  death  obeyed,  besought  Do- 
raitian  to  be  to  him  a  brother. 

Domitian  had  no  such  intention.  He 
had  a  party  behind  him,  one  made  up 
of  old  Neronians,  the  army  of  the  dis- 
contented, who  wanted  a  change,  and 
greatly  admired  this  charming  young 
prince  whose  hours  were  passed  in  kill- 
ing flies  and  making  love  to  married 
women.  The  pretorians  too  had  been 
seduced.  Domitian  could  make  capti- 
vating promises  when  he  chose. 

As  a  consequence  Titus,  like  Ves- 
pasian, was  uneasy,  and  with  cause. 
Dion  Cassius,  or  rather  that  brute 
Xiphilin,  his  abbreviator,  mentions  the 
fever  that  overtook  him,  the  same  his 
father  had  met.  It  was  mortal,  of 
course,  and  the  purple  was  Domitian's. 

For  a  year  and  a  day  thereafter  you 
112 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

would  have  thought  Titus  still  at  the 
helm.  There  was  the  same  clemency,  the 
same  regard  for  justice,  the  same  refine- 
ment and  fastidiousness.  The  morose 
young  poet  had  developed  into  a  model 
monarch.  The  old  Neronians  were  per- 
plexed, irritated  too ;  they  had  expected 
other  things.  Domitian  was  merely  feel- 
ing the  way;  the  hand  that  held  the 
sceptre  was  not  quite  sure  of  its 
strength,  and,  tentatively  almost,  this 
Prince  of  Virtue  began  to  scrutinize  the 
morals  of  Rome.  For  the  first  time  he 
noticed  that  the  cocottes  took  their  air- 
ing in  litters.  But  litters  were  not  for 
them!  That  abuse  he  put  a  stop  to  at 
once.  A  senator  manifested  an  interest 
in  ballet-girls ;  he  was  disgraced.  The 
vestals,  to  whose  indiscretions  no  one 
had  paid  much  attention,  learned  the 
statutes  of  an  archaic  law,  and  were 
buried  alive.  The  early  distaste  for 
blood  was  diminishing.  Domitian  had 
the  purple,  but  it  was  not  bright 
enough;  he  wanted  it  red,  and  what 
Domitian  wanted  he  got.  Your  god 
113 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

and  master  orders  it,  was  the  formula  he 
began  to  use  when  addressing  the  Senate 
and  People  of  Rome. 

To  that  the  people  were  indifferent. 
The  spectacles  he  gave  in  the  Flavian 
amphitheatre  were  too  magnificently 
atrocious  not  to  be  a  compensation  in 
full  for  any  eccentricity  in  which  he 
might  indulge.  Besides,  under  Nero, 
Claud,  Caligula,  on  en  avait  vu  bien 
d'autres.  And  at  those  spectacles  where 
he  presided,  crowned  with  a  tiara,  on 
which  were  the  images  of  Jupiter,  Juno 
and  Minerva,  while  grouped  about  him 
the  college  of  Flavian  flamens  wore 
tiaras  that  differed  therefrom  merely  in 
this,  that  they  bore  his  image  too,  the 
people  right  royally  applauded  their 
master  and  their  god. 

And  it  was  just  as  well  they  did; 
Domitian  was  quite  capable  of  ordering 
everybody  into  the  arena.  As  yet,  how- 
ever, he  had  appeared  little  different 
from  any  other  prince.  That  Rome 
might  understand  that  there  was  a 
diflPerence,  and  also  in  what  that  differ- 
114 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLAVIA 

ence  consisted,  ho  gave  a  supper.  Every- 
one worth  knowing  was  bidden,  and,  as 
is  usual  in  state  functions,  everyone  that 
was  bidden  came.  The  supper  hall  was 
draped  with  black ;  the  ceiling,  the  walls, 
the  floor,  everything  was  basaltic.  The 
couches  were  black,  the  linen  was  black, 
the  slaves  were  black.  Behind  each 
guest  was  a  broken  column  with  his 
name  on  it.  The  food  was  such  as  is 
prepared  when  death  has  come.  The 
silence  was  that  of  the  tomb.  The  only 
audible  voice  was  Domitian's.  He  was 
talking  very  wittily  and  charmingly 
about  murder,  about  proscriptions,  the 
good  informers  do,  the  utility  of  the 
headsman,  the  majesty  of  the  law.  The 
guests,  a  trifle  ill  at  ease,  wished  their 
host  sweet  dreams.  "  The  same  to  you," 
he  answered,  and  deplored  that  they 
must  go. 

On  the  morrow  informers  and  heads- 
men were  at  work.  Any  pretext  was 
sufficient.  Birth,  wealth,  fame,  or  the 
lack  of  them — anything  whatever — and 
there  the  culprit  stood,  charged  not  with 
115 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

treason  to  an  emperor,  but  with  impiety 
to  a  god.  On  the  judgment  seat  Domi- 
tian  sat.  Before  him  the  accused  passed, 
and  under  his  eyes  they  were  questioned, 
tortured,  condemned  and  killed.  At  once 
their  property  passed  into  the  keeping 
of  the  prince. 

Of  that  he  had  need.  The  arena  was 
expensive,  but  the  drain  was  elsewhere. 
A  little  before,  a  quarrelsome  people, 
the  Dacians,  whom  it  took  a  Trajan  to 
subdue,  had  overrun  the  Danube,  and 
were  marching  down  to  Rome.  Domitian 
set  out  to  meet  them.  The  Dacians  re- 
treated, not  at  all  because  they  were 
repulsed,  but  because  Domitian  thought 
it  better  warfare  to  pay  them  to  do  so. 
On  his  return  after  that  victory  he  en- 
joyed a  triumph  as  fair  as  that  of 
Caesar.  And  each  year  since  then  the 
emperor  of  Rome  had  paid  tribute  to  a 
nation  of  mongrel  oafs. 

Of  course  he  needed  money.  The  in- 
formers were  there  and  he  got  it,  and 
with  it  that  spectacle  of  torture  and  of 
blood  which  he  needed  too.  Curiously, 
116 


THE    HOUSE    OF    FLA  VIA 

his  melancholy  increased ;  his  good  looks 
had  gone;  Psyche  was  no  longer  amor- 
ous of  his  eyes.  Something  else  haunted 
him,  something  he  could  not  define ;  the 
past,  perhaps,  perhaps  the  future.  To 
his  ears  came  strange  sounds,  the  mur- 
mur of  his  own  name,  and  suddenly 
silence.  Then,  too,  there  always  seemed 
to  be  something  behind  him;  something 
that  when  he  turned  disappeared.  The 
room  in  which  he  slept  he  had  covered 
with  a  polished  metal  that  reflected 
everything,  yet  still  the  intangible  was 
there.  Once  Pallas  came  in  her  chariot, 
waved  him  farewell,  and  disappeared, 
borne  by  black  horses  across  the  black 
night. 

The  astrologers  consulted  had  nothing 
pleasant  to  say.  They  knew,  as  Domi- 
tian  knew,  that  the  end  was  near.  So 
was  theirs.  To  one  of  them,  who  pre- 
dicted his  immediate  death,  he  inquired, 
"What  will  your  end  be?"  "I,"  an- 
swered the  astrologer — "  I  shall  be  torn 
by  dogs."  "  To  the  stake  with  him !  " 
cried  Domitian ;  "  let  him  be  burned 
117 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

alive ! "  Suetonius  says  that  a  storm 
put  out  the  flames,  and  dogs  devoured 
the  corpse.  Another  astrologer  pre- 
dicted that  Domitian  would  die  before 
noon  on  the  morrow.  In  order  to  con- 
vince him  of  his  error,  Domitian  ordered 
him  to  be  executed  the  subsequent  night. 
Before  noon  on  the  n;orrow  Domitian 
was  dead. 

Philostratus  and  Dion  Cassius  both 
unite  in  saying  that  at  that  hour  Apol- 
lonius  was  at  Ephesus,  preaching  to  the 
multitude.  In  the  middle  of  the  sermon 
he  hesitated,  but  in  a  moment  he  began 
anew.  Again  he  hesitated,  his  eyes  half 
closed;  then,  suddenly  he  shouted, 
"  Strike  him !  Strike  him  once  more !  " 
And  immediately  to  his  startled  audience 
he  related  a  scene  that  was  occurring 
at  Rome,  the  attack  on  Domitian,  his 
struggle  with  an  assailant,  his  eff'ort  to 
tear  out  his  eyes,  the  rush  of  conspira- 
tors, and  finally  the  fall  of  the  emperor, 
pierced  by  seven  knives. 

The  story  may  not  be  true,  and  yet  if 
it  were! 

U8 


YU 

THE   POISON   IN   THE   PURPLE 

Rome  never  was  healthy.  The  tra- 
montana  visited  it  then  as  now,  fever, 
too,  and  sudden  death.  To  emperors  it 
was  fatal.  Since  Caesar  a  malaria  had 
battened  on  them  all.  Nerva  escaped,  but 
only  through  abdication.  The  mantle 
that  fell  from  Domitian's  shoulders  on 
to  his  was  so  dangerous  in  its  splendor, 
that,  fearing  the  infection,  he  passed  it 
to  Ulpius  Trajanus,  tlie  lustre  un- 
dimmed. 

Ulpius  Trajanus,  Trajan  for  brevity, 
a  Spaniard  by  birth,  a  soldier  by  choice ; 
one  who  had  fought  against  Parthian 
and  Jew,  who  had  triumphed  through 
Pannonia  and  made  it  his  own;  a  gen- 
eral whose  hair  had  whitened  on  the 
field;  a  consul  who  had  frightened  na- 
tions, was  afraid  of  the  sheen  of  that 
119 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

purple  which  dazzled,  corroded  and 
killed.  He  bore  it,  indeed,  but  at  arm's- 
length.  He  kept  himself  free  from  the 
subtlety  of  its  poison,  from  the  microbes 
of  Rome  as  well. 

He  was  in  Cologne  when  Domitian 
died  and  Nerva  accepted  and  renounced 
the  throne.  It  was  a  year  before  he 
ventured  among  the  seven  hills.  When 
he  arrived  you  would  have  said  another 
Augustus,  not  the  real  Augustus,  but 
the  Augustus  of  legend,  and  the  late 
Mr.  Gibbon.  When  he  girt  the  new 
prefect  of  the  pretorium  with  the  im- 
memorial sword,  he  addressed  him  in 
copy-book  phrases — "  If  I  rule  wisely, 
use  it  for  me ;  unwisely,  against  me." 

Rome  listened  open-mouthed.  The 
change  from  Domitian's  formula, 
"  Your  god  and  master  orders  it,"  was 
too  abrupt  to  be  immediately  under- 
stood. Before  it  was  grasped  Trajan 
was  off  again;  this  time  to  the  Danube 
and  beyond  it,  to  Dacia  and  her  fens. 

Many  years  later — a  century  or  two, 
to  be  exact — a  Persian  satrap  loitered 
120 


THE    POISON    IN    THE    PURPLE 

in  a  forum  of  Rome.  "  It  is  here,"  he 
declared,  "  I  am  tempted  to  forget  that 
man  is  mortal." 

He  had  passed  beneath  a  triumphal 
arch ;  before  him  was  a  glittering  square, 
grandiose,  yet  severe;  a  stretch  of  tem- 
ples and  basilicas,  in  which  masterpieces 
felt  at  home — the  Forum  of  Trajan,  the 
compliment  of  a  nation  to  a  prince. 
Dominating  it  was  a  column,  in  whose 
thick  spirals  you  read  to-day  the  one 
reliable  chronicle  of  the  Dacian  cam- 
paign. Was  not  Gautier  well  advised 
when  he  said  only  art  endures.? 

There  were  other  chronicles  in  plenty ; 
there  were  the  histories  of  JElius 
Maurus,  of  Marius  Maximus,  and  that 
of  Spartian,  but  they  are  lost.  There 
is  a  page  or  two  in  the  abbreviation 
which  Xiphilin  made  of  Dion ;  Aurelius 
Victor  has  a  little  to  add,  so  also  has 
Eutropus,  but,  practically  speaking, 
there  is,  apart  from  that  column,  noth- 
ing save  conjecture. 

Campaigns  are  wearisome  reading, 
but  not  the  one  that  is  pictured  there. 
121 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

You  ask  a  curve  a  question,  and  in  the 
next  you  find  the  reply.  There  is  a 
point,  however,  on  which  it  is  dumb — 
the  origin  of  the  war.  But  if  you  wish 
to  know  the  result,  not  the  momentary 
and  transient  result,  but  the  sequel 
which  futurity  held,  look  at  the  ruins  at 
that  column's  base. 

The  origin  of  the  war  was  Domitian's 
diplomacy.  The  chieftain  whom  he  had 
made  king,  and  who  had  been  surprised 
enough  at  receiving  a  diadem  instead  of 
the  point  of  a  sword,  fancied,  and  not 
unreasonably,  that  the  annuity  which 
Rome  paid  him  was  to  continue  forever. 
But  Domitian,  though  a  god,  was  not 
otherwise  immortal.  When  he  died 
abruptly  the  annuity  ceased.  The 
Dacian  king  sent  word  that  he  was  sur- 
prised at  the  delay,  but  he  must  have 
been  far  more  so  at  the  promptness  with 
which  he  got  Trajan's  reply.  It  was  a 
blare  of  bugles,  which  he  thought  for- 
ever dumb;  a  flight  of  eagles,  which 
he  thought  were  winged. 

In  the  spirals  of  the  column  you  see 
122 


THE    POISON    IN   THE    PURPLE 

the  advancing  army,  the  retreating  foe ; 
then  the  Dacian  dragon  saluting  the 
standards  of  Rome ;  peace  declared,  and 
an  army,  whose  very  repose  is  menacing, 
standing  there  to  see  that  peace  is  kept. 
And  was  it?  In  the  ascending  spiral  is 
the  new  revolt,  the  attempt  to  assassin- 
ate Trajan,  the  capture  of  the  con- 
spirators, the  advance  of  the  legions,  the 
retreat  of  the  Dacians,  burning  their 
cities  as  they  go,  carrying  their  wounded 
and  their  women  with  them,  and  at  last 
pressing  about  a  huge  cauldron  that  is 
filled  with  poison,  fighting  among  them- 
selves for  a  cup  of  the  brew,  and  rolling 
on  the  ground  in  the  convulsions  of 
death.  Farther  on  is  the  treasure  of 
the  king.  To  hide  it  he  had  turned  a 
river  from  its  source,  sunk  the  gold  in 
a  vault  beneath,  and  killed  the  workmen 
that  had  labored  there.  Beyond  is  the 
capture  of  the  capital,  the  suicide  of 
the  chief,  a  troop  of  soldiers  driving 
captives  and  cattle  before  them,  the 
death  of  a  nation  and  the  end  of  war. 
The  subsequent  triumph  does  not  ap- 
123 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

pear  on  the  column.  It  is  said  that  ten 
thousand  beasts  were  slaughtered  in  the 
arenas,  slaughtering,  as  they  fell,  a 
thousand  of  their  slaughterers.  But  the 
spectacle,  however  fair,  was  not  of  a 
nature  to  detain  Trajan  long  in  Rome. 
The  air  there  had  not  improved  in  the 
least,  and  presently  he  was  off  again, 
this  time  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates, 
arguing  with  the  Parthians,  avoiding 
danger  in  the  only  way  he  knew,  by 
facing  it. 

It  was  then  that  the  sheen  of  the 
purple  glowed.  If  lustreless  at  home, 
it  was  royally  red  abroad.  In  a  cam- 
paign that  was  little  more  than  a  trium- 
phant promenade  he  doubled  the  empire. 
To  the  world  of  Caesar  he  added  that 
of  Alexander.  Allies  he  turned  into 
subjects,  vassals  into  slaves.  Armenia, 
Mesopotamia,  Assyria,  were  added  to 
the  realm.  Trajan's  footstools  were 
diadems.  He  had  moved  back  one  fron- 
tier, he  moved  another.  From  Britain 
to  the  Indus,  Rome  was  mistress  of  the 
earth.  Had  Trajan  been  younger, 
1^4 


THE    POISON    IN    THE    TURPLE 

China,  whose  very  name  was  unknown, 
would  have  yielded  to  him  her  corrup- 
tion, her  printing  press,  her  powder  and 
her  tea. 

That  he  would  have  enjoyed  these 
things  is  not  at  all  conjectural.  He 
was  then  an  old  man,  but  he  was  not  a 
good  one — at  least  not  in  the  sense  we 
use  the  term  to-day.  He  had  habits 
which  are  regarded  now  less  as  vices 
than  perversions,  but  which  at  that  time 
were  taken  as  a  matter  of  course  and 
accepted  by  everyone,  even  by  the  stoics, 
very  calmly,  with  a  grain  of  Attic  salt 
at  that.  Men  were  regarded  as  virtu- 
ous when  they  were  brave,  when  they 
were  honest;  the  idea  of  using  the  ex- 
pression in  its  later  sense  occurred,  if  at 
all,  in  jest  merely,  as  a  synonym  for  the 
eunuch.  It  was  the  matron  and  the 
vestal  who  were  supposed  to  be  straight, 
and  their  straightness  was  wholly  sup- 
posititious. The  ceremonies  connected 
with  the  phallus,  and  those  observed  in 
the  worship  of  the  Bona  Dea,  were  of  a 
nature  that  no  virtue  could  withstand. 
125 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Every  altar,  Juvenal  said,  had  its  Clo- 
dius,  and  even  in  Clodius'  absence  there 
were  always  those  breaths  of  Sapphic 
song  that  blew  through  Mitylene. 

It  is  just  that  absence  of  a  quality 
which  we  regard  as  an  added  grace; 
one,  parenthetically,  which  dowered  the 
world  with  a  new  conception  of  beauty 
that  makes  it  difficult  to  picture  Rome. 
Modern  ink  has  acquired  Nero's  blush ; 
it  comes  very  readily,  yet,  however  sensi- 
tive a  writer  may  be,  once  Roman  history 
is  before  him,  he  may  violate  it  if  he 
choose;  he  may  even  give  it  a  child,  but 
never  can  he  make  it  immaculate.  He 
may  skip,  indeed,  if  he  wish;  and  it  is 
because  he  has  skipped  so  often  that  one 
fancies  that  Augustus  was  all  right. 
The  rain  of  fire  which  fell  on  the  cities 
that  mirrored  their  towers  in  the  Bitter 
Sea,  might  just  as  well  have  fallen  on 
him,  on  Vergil,  too,  on  Caligula,  Claud, 
Nero,  Otho,  Vitellius,  Titus,  Domitian, 
and  particularly  on  Trajan. 

As  lieutenant  in  the  latter's  triumph- 
ant promenade,  was  a  nephew,  ^lius 
126 


THE    POISON    IN    THE    PURPLE 

Hadrianus,  a  young  man  for  whom 
Trajan's  wife  is  rumored  to  have  had 
more  than  a  platonic  affection,  and  who 
in  younger  days  was  numbered  among 
Trajan's  mignons.  During  the  prog- 
ress of  that  promenade  Trajan  fell  ill. 
The  command  of  the  troops  was  left  to 
Hadrian,  and  Trajan  started  for  Rome. 
On  the  way  he  died.  In  what  manner  is 
not  known ;  his  wife,  however,  was  with 
him,  and  it  was  in  her  hand  that  a  letter 
went  to  the  senate  stating  that  Trajan 
had  adopted  Hadrian  as  his  heir.  Tra- 
jan had  done  nothing  of  the  sort.  The 
idea  had  indeed  occurred  to  him,  but  long 
since  it  had  been  abandoned.  He  had 
even  formally  selected  someone  else,  but 
his  wife  was  with  him,  and  her  lover 
commanded  the  troops.  The  lustre  of 
the  purple,  always  dazzling,  had  fas- 
cinated Hadrian's  eyes.  Did  he  steal 
it?  One  may  conjecture,  yet  never 
know.  In  any  event  it  was  his,  and  he 
folded  it  very  magnificently  about  him. 
Still  young,  a  trifle  over  thirty,  hand- 
some, unusually  accomplished,  grand 
127 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

seigneur  to  his  finger-tips,  endowed  with 
a  manner  which  is  rumored  to  have  been 
one  of  great  charm,  possessed  of  the 
amplest  appreciation  of  the  elegancies 
of  life,  he  had  precisely  the  figure  which 
purple  adorns.  But,  though  the  lustre 
had  fascinated,  he  too  knew  its  spell; 
and  presently  he  started  off  on  a  jour- 
ney about  the  world,  which  lasted  fifteen 
years,  and  which,  when  ended,  left  the 
world  the  richer  for  his  passing,  deco^ 
rated  with  the  monuments  he  had  strewn. 
Before  that  j  ourney  began,  at  the  earli- 
est inimor  of  Trajan's  death,  the  Eu- 
phrates and  Tigris  awoke,  the  cinders  of 
Nineveh  flamed.  The  rivers  and  land 
that  lay  between  knew  that  their  con- 
queror had  gone.  Hadrian  knew  it  also, 
and  knew  too  that,  though  he  might  oc- 
cupy the  warrior's  throne,  he  never  could 
fill  the  warrior's  place.  To  Armenia,  Me- 
sopotamia, Assyria,  freedom  was  re- 
stored. Dacia  could  have  had  it  for  the 
asking.  But  over  Dacia  the  toga  had 
been  thrown ;  it  was  as  Roman  as  Gaul. 
A  corner  of  it  is  Roman  still ;  the  Rou- 
128 


THE    POISON    IN    THE   PURPLE 

manians  are  there.  But  though  Dacia 
was  quiet,  in  its  neighborhood  the  rest- 
less Sarmatians  prowled  and  threatened. 
Hadrian,  who  had  already  written  a 
book  on  tactics,  knew  at  once  how  to 
act.  Domitian's  policy  was  before  him ; 
he  followed  the  precedent,  and  paid  the 
Sarmatians  to  be  still.  It  requires  little 
acumen  to  see  that  when  Rome  per- 
mitted herself  to  be  blackmailed  the  end 
was  near. 

For  the  time  being,  however,  there 
was  peace,  and  in  its  interest  Hadrian 
set  out  on  that  unequalled  journey  over 
a  land  that  was  his.  Had  fate  relented, 
Trajan  could  have  made  a  wider  one 
still.  But  in  Trajan  was  the  soldier 
merely*  when  he  journeyed  it  was  with 
the  sword.  In  Hadrian  was  the  dilet- 
tante, the  erudite  too;  he  travelled  not 
to  conquer,  but  to  learn,  to  satisfy  an 
insatiable  curiosity,  for  self-improve- 
ment, for  glory  too.  Behind  him  was  an 
army,  not  of  soldiers,  but  of  masons, 
captained  by  architects,  artists  and  en- 
gineers. Did  a  site  please  him,  there 
129 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

was  a  temple  at  once,  or  if  not  that,  then 
a  bridge,  an  aqueduct,  a  hbrary,  a  new 
fashion,  sovereignty  even,  but  every- 
where the  spectacle  of  an  emperor  in 
flesh  and  blood.  For  the  first  time  the 
provinces  were  able  to  understand  that 
a  Cffisar  was  not  necessarily  a  brute,  a 
phantom  and  a  god. 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have 
made  one  of  that  court  of  poets  and 
savants  that  surrounded  him;  to  have 
dined  with  him  in  Paris,  eaten  oysters 
in  London ;  sat  with  him  while  he 
watched  that  wall  go  up  before  the 
Scots,  and  then  to  have  passed  down 
again  through  a  world  still  young — a 
world  beautiful,  ornate,  unutilitarian ;  a 
world  to  which  trams,  advertisements 
and  telegraph  poles  had  not  yet  come ;  a 
world  that  still  had  illusions,  myths  and 
mysteries ;  one  in  which  religion  and 
poetry  went  hand  in  hand — a  world 
without  newspapers, hypocrisy  and  cant. 

Hadrian,  doubtless,  enjoyed  it.  He 
was  young  enough  to  have  enthusiasms 
and  to  show  them ;  he  was  one  of  the  best 
130 


THE    POISON    IN    THE   PURPLE 

read  men  of  the  day ;  he  was  poet, 
painter,  sculptor,  musician,  erudite  and 
emperor  in  one.  Of  course  he  enjoyed 
it.  The  world,  over  which  he  travelled, 
was  his,  not  by  virtue  of  the  purple 
alone,  but  because  of  his  knowledge  of 
it.  The  prince  is  not  necessarily  cosmo- 
politan ;  the  historian  and  antiquarian 
are.  Hadrian  was  an  early  Quinet,  an 
earlier  Champollion ;  always  the  thinker, 
sometimes  the  cook.  And  to  those  in  his 
suite  it  must  have  been  a  sight  very 
unique  to  see  a  Csesar  who  had  published 
his  volume  of  erotic  verse,  just  as  any 
other  young  man  might  do;  who  had 
hunted  lions,  not  in  the  arena,  but  in 
Africa,  make  researches  on  the  plain 
where  Troy  had  been,  and  a  supreme  of 
sow's  breast,  peacock,  pheasant,  ham 
and  boar,  which  he  called  Pentaphar- 
march,  and  which  he  offered  as  he  had 
his  Catacriani — the  erotic  verse — as 
something  original  and  nice. 

Insatiably  inquisitive,  verifying  a  his- 
tory that  he  was  preparing  in  the  lands 
which  gave  that  history  birth,  he  passed 
131 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

through  Egypt  and  Asia,  questioning 
sphinxes,  the  cerements  of  kings,  the 
arcana  of  the  temples ;  deciphering  the 
sacred  books,  arguing  with  magi,  inter- 
rogating the  stars.  For  the  thinker, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  hour,  was  as- 
trologer too,  and  one  of  the  few  anec- 
dotes current  concerning  him  is  in 
regard  to  a  habit  he  had  of  drawing  up 
on  the  31st  of  December  the  events  of 
the  coming  year.  After  consulting  the 
stars  on  that  31st  of  December  which 
occurred  in  the  twenty-second  year  of 
his  reign,  he  prepared  a  calendar  which 
extended  only  to  the  10th  of  July.  On 
that  day  he  died. 

The  calendar  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  otherwise  serviceable.  It  was  in 
Bithynia  he  found  a  shepherd  whose  ap- 
pearance which,  in  its  perfection,  was 
quite  earthly,  suggested  neither  heaven 
nor  hell,  but  some  planet  where  the 
atmosphere  differs  from  ours;  where 
it  is  pink,  perhaps,  or  faintly  ochre; 
where  birth  and  death  have  forms  higher 
than  here. 

132 


THE    rOISON    IN    THE   PURPLE 

Hadrian,  captivated,  led  the  lad  in 
leash.  The  facts  concerning  that  epi- 
sode have  been  so  frequently  given  that 
the  repetition  is  needless  here.  Besides, 
the  point  is  elsewhere.  Presently  the  lad 
fell  overboard.  Hadrian  lost  a  valet, 
Rome  an  emperor,  and  Olympus  a  god. 
But  in  attempting  to  deify  the  lost 
lackey,  the  grief  of  Hadrian  was  so  im- 
mediate, that  it  is  permissible  to  fancy 
that  the  lad's  death  was  not  one  of 
those  events  which  the  emperor-astrol- 
oger noted  beforehand  on  his  calendar. 
The  lad  was  decently  buried,  the  Nile 
gave  up  her  dead,  and  on  the  banks  a 
fair  city  rose,  one  that  had  its  temples, 
priests,  altars  and  shrines ;  a  city  that 
worshipped  a  star,  and  called  that  star 
Antinous.  Hadrian  then  could  have 
congratulated  himself.  Even  Caligula 
would  have  envied  him.  He  had  done  his 
worst;  he  had  deified  not  a  lad,  but  a 
lust.  And  not  for  the  moment  alone.  A 
half  century  later  Tertullian  noted  that 
the  worship  still  endured,  and  subse- 
quently the  Alexandrine  Clement  dis- 
133 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

covered  consciences  that  Antinous  had 
reproached. 

Antinous,  deified,  was  presently  for- 
got. A  young  Roman,  wonderfully 
beautiful,  Dion  says,  yet  singularly  ef- 
feminate; a  youth  who  could  barely 
carry  a  shield;  who  slept  between  rose- 
leaves  and  lilies;  who  was  an  artist 
withal;  a  poet  who  had  written  lines 
that  Martial  might  have  mistaken  for 
his  own,  Cejonius  Verus  by  name,  suc- 
ceeded the  Bithynian  shepherd.  Ha- 
drian, who  would  have  adopted  Antinous, 
adopted  Verus  in  his  stead.  But  Ha- 
drian was  not  happy  in  his  choice.  Verus 
died,  and  singularly  enough,  Hadrian 
selected  as  future  emperor  the  one  ruler 
against  whom  history  has  not  a  re- 
proach, Pius  Antonin. 

Meanwhile  the  journey  continued. 
The  Thousand  and  One  Nights  were 
realized  then  if  ever.  The  beauty  of  the 
world  was  at  its  apogee,  the  glory  of 
Rome  as  well;  and  through  secrets  and 
marvels  Hadrian  strolled,  note-book  in 
hand,  his  eyes  unwearied,  his  curiosity 
134 


THE    POISON    IN    THE    PURPLE 

unsatiated  still.  To  pleasure  him  the 
intervales  took  on  a  fairer  glow ;  cities 
decked  themselves  anew,  the  temples  un- 
veiled their  mysteries;  and  when  he 
passed  to  the  intervales  liberty  came ;  to 
the  cities,  sovereignty ;  to  the  temples, 
shrines.  The  world  rose  to  him  as  a 
woman  greets  her  lover.  His  travels 
were  not  fatigues;  they  were  delights, 
in  which  nations  participated,  and  of 
which  the  memories  endure  as  though  en- 
chanted still. 

It  would  have  been  interesting,  no 
doubt,  to  have  dined  with  him  in  Paris ; 
to  have  quarried  lions  in  their  African 
fens ;  to  have  heard  archaic  hymns 
ripple  through  the  rushes  of  the  Nile; 
to  have  lounged  in  the  Academe,  to  have 
scaled  Parnassus,  and  sailed  the  JEgean 
Sea;  but,  a  history  and  an  arm-chair 
aiding,  the  traveller  has  but  to  close  his 
eyes  and  the  past  returns.  Without 
disturbing  so  much  as  a  shirt-box,  he 
may  repeat  that  promenade.  Triremes 
have  foundered;  litters  are  out  of  date; 
painted  elephants  are  no  more;  the  sky 
135 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

has  changed,  climates  with  it;  there  are 
colors,  as  there  are  arts,  that  have  gone 
from  us  forever;  there  are  desolate 
plains,  where  green  and  yellow  was ;  the 
shriek  of  steam  where  gods  have 
strayed;  advertisements  in  sacred 
groves;  Baedekers  in  ruins  that  never 
heard  an  atheist's  voice ;  solitudes  where 
there  were  splendors;  the  snarl  of  jack- 
als where  once  were  birds  and  bees — yet, 
history  and  the  arm-chair  aiding,  it  all 
returns.  Any  traveller  may  follow  in 
Hadrian's  steps;  he  is  stayed  but  once 
— on  the  threshold  of  the  Temple  of 
Eleusis.  It  is  there  history  gropes,  im- 
potent and  blind,  and  it  is  there  the  in- 
terest of  that  journey  culminated. 

Beyond  the  episode  connected  with 
Antinous,  Hadrian's  journey  was  marked 
by  another,  one  which  occurred  in 
Judaea.  Both  were  infamous,  no  doubt, 
but,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  both 
mark  the  working  of  the  poison  in  the 
purple  that  he  bore. 

Since  Titus  had  gone,  despairful 
Judffia  had  taken  heart  again.  Hope  in 
136 


THE    POISON    IN    THE   TURPLE 

that  land  was  inextinguishable.  The 
walls  of  Jerusalem  were  still  standing; 
in  the  Temple  the  offices  continued. 
Though  Rome  remained,  there  was  Is- 
rael too.  Passing  that  way  one  after- 
noon, Hadrian  mused.  The  city  affected 
him;  the  site  was  superb.  And  as  he 
mused  it  occurred  to  him  that  Jerusalem 
was  less  harmonious  to  the  ear  than 
Hadrianopolis ;  that  the  Temple  occu- 
pied a  position  on  which  a  Capitol  would 
look  far  better;  in  brief,  that  Jehovah 
might  be  advantageously  replaced  by 
Jove.  The  army  of  masons  that  were 
ever  at  his  heels  were  set  to  work  at 
once.  They  had  received  similar  orders 
and  performed  similar  tasks  so  often 
that  they  could  not  fancy  anyone  would 
object.  The  Jews  did.  They  fought 
as  they  had  never  fought  before;  they 
fought  for  three  years  against  a  Ne- 
buchadnezzar who  created  torrents  of 
blood  so  abundant  that  stones  were  car- 
ried for  miles,  and  who  left  corpses 
enough  to  fertilize  the  land  for  a  decade. 
The  survivors  were  sold.  Those  for 
137 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

whom  no  purchasers  could  be  found  had 
their  heads  amputated.  Jerusalem  was 
razed  to  the  ground.  The  site  of  the 
Temple  was  furrowed  by  the  plow, 
sown  with  salt,  and  in  place  of  the  City 
of  David  rose  ^lia  Capitolina,  a  minia- 
ture Rome,  whose  gates,  save  on  one 
day  in  the  year,  Jews  were  forbidden 
under  penalty  of  death  to  pass,  were 
forbidden  to  look  at,  and  over  which 
were  images  of  swine,  pigs  with  scorn- 
ful snouts,  the  feet  turned  inward,  the 
tail  twisted  like  a  lie. 

It  was  not  honorable  warfare,  but  it 
was  effective ;  then,  too,  it  was  Hadrian- 
esque,  the  mad  insult  of  a  madman  to 
a  race  as  mad  as  he.  The  purple  had 
done  its  work.  History  has  left  the  rise 
of  this  emperor  conjectural;  his  fall  is 
written  in  blood.  As  he  began  he  ended, 
a  poet  and  a  beast. 

Presently  he  was  in  Rome.  It  was  not 
homesickness  that  took  him  there;  he 
was  far  too  cosmopolitan  to  suffer  from 
any  such  malady  as  that.  It  was  the 
accumulations  of  a  fifteen-year  excur- 
138 


THE    POISON    IN   THE    PURPLE 

sion  through  the  metropoles  of  art 
which  demanded  a  gallery  of  their  own. 
Another  with  similar  tastes  and  similar 
power  might  have  ordered  everything 
which  pleasured  his  eye  to  be  carted  to 
Rome,  but  in  his  quality  of  artifex  om- 
nipotens  Hadrian  embellished  and  never 
sacked.  There  were  painters  and  sculp- 
tors enough  in  that  army  at  his  heels, 
and  whatever  appealed  to  him  was 
copied  on  the  spot.  So  much  was 
copied  that  a  park  of  ten  square  miles 
was  just  large  enough  to  form  the  open- 
air  museum  which  he  had  designed,  one 
which  centuries  of  excavation  have  not 
exhausted  yet. 

The  museum  became  a  mad-house. 
Hadrian  was  ill ;  tired  in  mind  and  body, 
smitten  with  imperialia.  It  was  then  the 
young  Verus  died,  leaving  for  a  wonder 
a  child  behind,  and  more  wonderful  still, 
Antonin  was  adopted.  Through  Rome, 
meanwhile,  terror  stalked.  Hadrian,  in 
search  of  a  remedy  against  his  increas- 
ing confusion  of  mind,  his  visible  weak- 
ness of  body,  turned  from  physicians  to 
139 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

oracles;  from  them  to  magic,  and  then 
to  blood.  He  decimated  the  senate. 
Soldiers,  freemen,  citizens,  anybody 
and  everybody  were  ordered  off  to  death. 
He  tried  to  kill  himself  and  failed;  he 
tried  again,  wondering,  no  doubt,  why 
he  who  commanded  death  for  others 
could  not  command  it  for  himself.  Pres- 
ently he  succeeded,  and  Antonin — the 
pious  Antonin,  as  the  senate  called  him 
— marshalled  from  cellars  and  crypts 
the  senators  and  citizens  whom  Hadrian 
had  ordered  to  be  destroyed. 


140 


VIII 

FAUSTINE 

Anyone  who  has  loitered  a  moment 
among  the  statues  in  the  Salle  des  An- 
tonins  at  the  Louvre  will  recall  the  bust 
of  the  Empress  Faustine.  It  stands 
near  the  entrance,  coercing  the  idler  to 
remove  his  hat;  to  stop  a  moment,  to 
gaze  and  dream.  The  face  differs  from 
that  which  Mr.  Swinburne  has  described. 
In  the  poise  of  the  head,  in  the  expres- 
sion of  the  lips,  particularly  in  the  fea- 
tures which,  save  the  low  brow,  are  not 
of  the  Roman  type,  there  is  a  comming- 
ling of  just  that  loveliness  and  melan- 
choly which  must  have  come  to  Psyche 
when  she  lost  her  god.  In  the  corners  of 
the  mouth,  in  the  droop  of  the  eyelids, 
in  the  moulding  of  the  chin,  you  may 
see  that  rarity — beauty  and  intellect  in 
one — and  with  it  the  heightening  shadow 
'  141 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

of  an  eternal  regret.  Before  her  Marcus 
Aurelius,  her  husband,  stands,  decked 
with  the  purple,  with  all  the  splendor  of 
the  imperator,  his  beard  in  overlapping 
curls,  his  questioning  eyes  dilated.  Be- 
yond is  her  daughter,  Lucille,  less  fair 
than  the  mother,  a  healthy  girl  of  the 
dairymaid  type.  Near  by  is  the  son.  Corn- 
modus.  Across  the  hall  is  Lucius  Verus, 
the  husband  of  Lucille ;  in  a  corner,  An- 
tonin,  Faustine's  father,  and,  more  re- 
motely, his  wife.  Together  they  form 
quite  a  family  group,  and  to  the  aver- 
age tourist  they  must  seem  a  thoroughly 
respectable  lot.  Antonin  certainly  was 
respectable.  He  was  the  first  emperor 
who  declined  to  be  a  brute.  Referring 
to  his  wife  he  said  that  he  would  rather 
be  with  her  in  a  desert  than  without  her 
in  a  palace;  the  speech,  parenthetically, 
of  a  man  who,  though  he  could  have 
cited  that  little  Greek  princess,  Nau- 
sicaa,  as  a  precedent,  was  too  well-bred 
to  permit  so  much  as  a  fringe  of  his 
household  linen  to  flutter  in  public. 
Besides,  at  his  hours,  he  was  a  poet,  and 
142 


FAUSTINE 

it  is  said  that  if  a  poet  tell  a  lie  twice 
he  will  believe  it.  Antonin  so  often  de- 
clared his  wife  to  be  a  charming  person 
that  in  the  end  no  doubt  he  thought  so. 
She  was  not  charming,  however,  or  if 
she  were,  her  charm  was  not  that  of 
exclusiveness. 

It  was  in  full  sight  of  this  lady's  in- 
consequences that  Faustine  was  edu- 
cated. Wherever  she  looked,  the  can- 
dors of  her  girlhood  were  violated.  The 
phallus  then  was  omnipresent.  lambli- 
cus,  not  the  novelist, but  the  philosopher, 
has  much  to  say  on  the  subject;  as  has 
Arnobius  in  the  Adversus  gentes,  and 
Lactance  in  the  De  falsa  religione.  If 
Juvenal,  Martial,  Petronius,  are  more 
reticent,  it  is  because  they  were  not 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  nor  yet  anti- 
quarians. No  one  among  us  exacts  a 
description  of  a  spire.  The  phallus 
was  as  common  to  them,  commoner  even. 
It  was  on  the  coins,  on  the  doors,  in  the 
gardens.  As  a  preservative  against 
Envy  it  hung  from  children's  necks. 
On  sun-dials  and  water  clocks  it  marked 
143 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

the  flight  of  time.  The  vestals  wor- 
shipped it.  At  weddings  it  was  used  in 
a  manner  which  need  not  be  described. 

It  was  from  such  surroundings  that 
Faustine  stepped  into  the  arms  of  the 
severe  and  stately  prince  whom  her 
father  had  chosen.  That  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  adored  her  is  certain.  His  note- 
book shows  it.  A  more  tender-hearted 
and  perfect  lover  romance  may  show, 
but  history  cannot.  He  must  have  been 
the  quintessence  of  refinement,  a  thor- 
oughbred to  his  finger-tips ;  one  for 
whom  that  purple  mantle  was  too  gaudy, 
and  yet  who  bore  it,  as  he  bore  every- 
thing else,  in  that  self-abnegatory  spirit 
which  the  higher  reaches  of  philosophy 
bring. 

He  was  of  that  rare  type  that  never 
complains  and  always  consoles. 

After  Antonin's  death,  his  hours 
ceased  to  be  his  own.  On  the  Euphrates 
there  was  the  wildest  disorder.  To  the 
north  new  races  were  pushing  nations 
over  the  Danube  and  the  Rhine.  From 
the  catacombs  Christ  was  emerging; 
144 


FAUSTINE 

from  the  Nile,  Serapis.  The  empire  was 
in  disarray.  Antonin  had  provided  his 
son-in-law  with  a  coadjutor,  Lucius 
Verus,  the  son  of  Hadrian's  mignon,  a 
magnificent  scoundrel ;  a  tall,  broad- 
shouldered  athlete,  with  a  skin  as  fresh 
as  a  girl's  and  thick  curly  hair,  which 
he  covered  with  a  powder  of  gold;  a 
•viveur,  whose  suppers  are  famous  still; 
whose  guests  were  given  the  slaves  that 
served  them,  the  plate  off  which  they 
had  eaten,  the  cups  from  which  they  had 
drunk — cups  of  gold,  cups  of  silver, 
jewelled  cups,  cups  from  Alexandria, 
murrhine  vases  filled  with  nard — cars 
and  litters  to  go  home  with,  mules  with 
silver  trappings  and  negro  muleteers. 
Capitolinus  says  that,  while  the  guests 
feasted,  sometimes  the  magnificent  Verus 
got  dnmk,  and  was  carried  to  bed  in  a 
coverlid,  or  else,  the  red  feather  aiding, 
turned  out  and  fought  the  watch. 

It    was    this    splendid    individual    to 

whom    Marcus    Aurelius    entrusted    the 

Euphrates.     They  had  been  brought  up 

together,    sharing    each    others    tutors, 

145 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

writing  themes  for  the  same  instructor, 
both  meanwhile  adolescently  enamored 
of  the  fair  Faustine.  It  was  to  Marcus 
she  was  given,  the  empire  as  a  dower; 
and  when  that  dower  passed  into  his 
hands,  he  could  think  of  nothing  more 
equitable  than  to  ask  Verus  to  share  it 
with  him.  Verus  was  not  stupid  enough 
to  refuse,  and  at  the  hour  when  the  Par- 
thians  turned  ugly,  he  needed  little  urg- 
ing to  set  out  for  the  East,  dreaming, 
as  he  did  so,  of  creating  there  an  em- 
pire that  should  be  wholly  his. 

At  that  time  Faustine  must  have  been 
at  least  twenty-eight,  possibly  thirty. 
There  were  matrons  who  had  not  seen 
their  fifteenth  year,  and  Faustine  had 
been  married  young.  Her  daughter, 
Lucille,  was  nubile.  Presently  Verus,  or 
rather  his  lieutenants,  succeeded,  and 
the  girl  was  betrothed  to  him.  There 
was  a  festival,  of  course,  games  in  abun- 
dance, and  plenty  of  blood. 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have 
seen  her  that  day,  the  iron  ring  of  be- 
trothal on  her  finger,  her  brother,  Com- 
146 


FAUSTINE 

modus,  staring  at  the  arrangement  of 
her  hair,  her  mother  prettily  perplexed, 
her  father  signing  orders  which  mes- 
sengers brought  and  despatched  while 
the  sand  took  on  a  deeper  red,  and  Rome 
shrieked  its  delight.  Yes,  it  would  have 
been  interesting  and  tj'^pical  of  the  hour. 
Her  hair  in  the  ten  tresses  which  were 
symbolic  of  a  fiancee's  innocence,  must 
have  amused  that  brute  of  a  brother  of 
hers,  and  the  iron  ring  on  the  fourth 
finger  of  her  left  hand  must  have  given 
Faustine  food  for  thought;  the  vestals, 
in  their  immaculate  robes,  must  have 
gazed  at  her  in  curious,  sisterly  ways, 
and  because  of  her  fresh  beauty  surely 
there  were  undertones  of  applause. 
Should  her  father  disappear  she  would 
make  a  gracious  imperatrix  indeed. 

But,  meanwhile,  there  was  Faustine, 
and  at  sight  of  her  legends  of  old  im- 
perial days  returned.  She  was  not  Mes- 
salina  yet,  but  in  the  stables  there  were 
jockeys  whose  sudden  wealth  surprised 
no  one ;  in  the  arenas  there  were  gladi- 
ators that  fought,  not  for  liberty,  nor 
147 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

for  death,  but  for  the  caresses  of  her 
eyes ;  in  the  side-scenes  there  were  mimes 
who  spoke  of  her;  there  were  senators 
who  boasted  in  their  cups,  and  in  the 
theatre  Rome  laughed  colossally  at  the 
catchword  of  her  amours. 

Marcus  Aurehus  then  was  occupied 
with  affairs  of  state.  In  similar  circum- 
stances so  was  Claud — Messalina's  hus- 
band— so,  too,  was  Antonin.  But  Claud 
was  an  imbecile,  Antonin  a  man  of  the 
world,  while  Marcus  Aurelius  was  a 
philosopher.  When  fate  links  a  woman 
to  any  one  of  these  varieties  of  the 
husband,  she  is  blessed  indeed.  Faustine 
was  particularly  favored. 

The  stately  prince  was  not  alone  a 
philosopher — a  calling,  by  the  way, 
which  was  common  enough  then,  and  has 
become  commoner  since — he  was  a  phi- 
losopher who  believed  in  philosophy,  a 
rarity  then  as  now.  The  exact  trend  of 
his  thought  is  difficult  to  define.  His 
note-book  is  filled  with  hesitations ; 
materialism  had  its  allurements,  so  also 
had  pantheism;  the  advantages  of  the 
148 


FAUSTINE 

Pyrrhonic  suspension  of  judgment  were 
clear  to  him  too ;  according  to  the  frame 
of  mind  in  which  he  wrote,  you  might 
fancy  him  an  agnostic,  again  an  akos- 
mist,  sometimes  both,  but  always  the 
ethical  result  is  the  same. 

"  Revenge  yourself  on  your  enemy  by 
not  resembling  him.  Forgive;  forgive 
always ;  die  forgiving.  Be  indulgent  to 
the  wrong-doer;  be  compassionate  to 
him;  tell  him  how  he  should  act;  speak 
to  him  without  anger,  without  sarcasm ; 
speak  to  him  affectionately.  Besides, 
what  do  you  know  of  his  wrong-doing? 
Are  all  his  thoughts  familiar  to  you? 
May  there  not  be  something  that  justi- 
fies him?  And  you,  are  you  entirely 
free  from  reproach?  Have  you  never 
done  wrong?  And  if  not,  was  it  fear 
that  restrained  you?  Was  it  pride,  or 
what?" 

In  the  synoptic  gospels  similar  recom- 
mendations appear.  Charity  is  the  New 
Testament  told  in  a  word.  Christians 
read  and  forget  it.  But  Christians  are 
not  philosophers.  The  latter  are  chari- 
149 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

table  because  they  regard  evil  as  a  part 
of  the  universal  order  of  things,  one 
which  it  is  idle  to  blame,  yet  permissible 
to  rectify. 

From  whatever  source  such  a  tenet 
springs,  whether  from  materialism, 
stoicism,  pyrrhonism,  epicureanism, 
atheism  even,  is  of  small  matter;  it  is  a 
tenet  which  is  honorable  to  the  holder. 
This  sceptred  misanthrope  possessed  it, 
and  it  was  in  that  his  wife  was  blessed. 
Years  later  he  died,  forgiving  her  in 
silence,  praising  her  aloud.  Claud,  re- 
ferring to  Messalina,  shouted  through 
the  Forum  that  the  fate  which  destined 
him  to  marry  impure  women  destined 
him  to  punish  them.  Marcus  Aurelius 
said  nothing.  He  did  not  know  what 
fate  destined  him  to  do,  but  he  did  know 
that  philosophy  taught  him  to  forgive. 

It  was  this  philosophy  that  first  per- 
plexed Faustine.  She  was  restless,  friv- 
olous, perhaps  also  a  trifle  depraved. 
Frivolous  because  all  women  were,  de- 
praved because  her  mother  was,  and 
restless   because   of   the   curiosity   that 

150 


FAUSTINE 

inflammable  imaginations  share — in 
brief,  a  Roman  princess.  Her  husband 
differed  from  the  Roman  prince.  His 
youth  had  not  been  entirely  circum- 
spect; he,  too,  had  his  curiosities,  but 
they  were  satisfied,  he  had  found  that 
they  stained.  When  he  married  he  was 
already  the  thinker;  doubtless,  he  was 
tiresome ;  he  could  have  had  little  small- 
talk,  and  his  hours  of  love-making  must 
have  been  rare.  Presently  the  affairs 
of  state  engrossed  him.  Faustine  was 
left  to  herself ;  save  a  friend  of  her  own 
sex,  a  woman  can  have  no  worse  com- 
panion. She,  too,  discovered  she  had 
curiosities.  A  gladiator  passed  that 
way — then  Rome ;  then  Lesbos ;  then  the 
Lampsacene.  "  You  are  my  husband's 
mistress,"  her  daughter  cried  at  her. 
"  And  you,"  the  mother  answered,  "  are 
your  brother's."  Even  in  the  aridity  of 
a  chronicle  the  accusation  and  rejoinder 
are  dramatic.  Fancy  what  they  must 
have  been  when  mother  and  daughter 
hissed  them  in  each  other's  teeth. 
Whether  the  argument  continued  is  im- 
151 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

material.  Both  could  have  claimed  the 
sanction  of  religion.  In  those  days  a  sin 
was  a  prayer.  Religion  was  then,  as  it 
always  had  been,  purely  political.  With 
the  individual,  with  his  happiness  or  as- 
pirations, it  concerned  itself  not  at  all. 
It  was  the  prosperity  of  the  empire,  its 
peace  and  immortality,  for  which  sacri- 
fices were  made,  and  libations  offered. 
The  god  of  Rome  was  Rome,  and  re- 
ligion was  patriotism.  The  antique  vir- 
tues, courage  in  war,  moderation  in 
peace,  and  honor  at  all  times,  were  civic, 
not  personal.  It  was  the  state  that  had 
a  soul,  not  the  individual.  Man  was 
ephemeral;  it  was  the  nation  that  en- 
dured. It  was  the  permanence  of  its 
grandeur  that  was  important,  nothing 
else. 

To  ensure  that  permanence  each  citi- 
zen labored.  As  for  the  citizen,  death 
was  near,  and  he  hastened  to  live ;  before 
the  roses  could  fade  he  wreathed  himself 
with  them.  Immortality  to  him  was  in 
his  descendants,  the  continuation  of  his 
name,  respect  to  his  ashes.  Any  other 
152 


FAUSTINE 

form  of  future  life  was  a  speculation, 
infrequent  at  that.  In  anterior  epochs 
Fright  had  peopled  Tartarus,  but 
Fright  had  gone.  The  Elysian  Fields 
were  vague,  wearisome  to  contemplate; 
even  metempsychosis  had  no  adherents. 
"  After  death,"  said  Caesar,  "  there  is 
nothing,"  and  all  the  world  agreed  with 
him.  The  hour,  too,  in  which  three 
thousand  gods  had  not  a  single  atheist, 
had  gone,  never  to  return.  Old  faiths 
had  crumbled.  None  the  less  was  Rome 
the  abridgment  of  every  superstition. 
The  gods  of  the  conquered  had  always 
been  part  of  her  spoils.  The  Pantheon 
had  become  a  lupanar  of  divinities  that 
presided  over  birth,  and  whose  rites  were 
obscene;  an  abattoir  of  gods  that  pre- 
sided over  death,  and  whose  worship  was 
gore.  To  please  them  was  easy.  Blood 
and  debauchery  was  all  that  was  re- 
quired. That  the  upper  classes  had  no 
faith  in  them  at  all  goes  without  the 
need  of  telling ;  the  atmosphere  of  their 
atriums  dripped  with  metaphysics.  But 
of  the  atheism  of  the  upper  classes  the 
153 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

people  knew  nothing;  they  clung 
piously  to  a  faith  which  held  a  theo- 
logical justification  of  every  sin,  and  in 
the  temples  fervent  prayers  were  mur- 
mured, not  for  future  happiness,  for 
that  was  unobtainable,  nor  yet  for  wis- 
dom or  virtue,  for  those  things  the  gods 
neither  granted  nor  possessed;  the 
prayers  were  that  the  gods  would  favor 
the  suppliant  in  his  hatreds  and  in  his 
lusts. 

Such  was  Rome  when  Verus  returned 
to  wed  Lucille.  Before  his  car  the 
phallus  swung;  behind  it  was  the  pest. 
A  little  before,  the  Tiber  overflowed. 
Presently,  in  addition  to  the  pest,  fam- 
ine came.  It  was  patent  to  everyone 
that  the  gods  were  vexed.  There  was 
blasphemy  somewhere,  and  the  Chris- 
tians were  tossed  to  the  beasts.  Faustine 
watched  them  die.  At  first  they  were  to 
her  as  other  criminals,  but  immediately 
a  difference  was  discerned.  They  met 
death,  not  with  grace,  perhaps,  but  with 
exaltation.  They  entered  the  arena  as 
though  it  were  an  enchanted  garden,  the 
154 


FAUSTINE 

color  of  the  emerald,  where  dreams  came 
true.  Faustine  questioned.  They  were 
enemies  of  state,  she  was  told.  The 
reply  left  her  perplexed,  and  she  ques- 
tioned again.  It  was  then  her  eyes  be- 
came inhabited  by  regret.  The  past  she 
tried  to  put  from  her,  but  remorse  is 
physical;  it  declines  to  be  dismissed. 
She  would  have  killed  herself,  but  she  no 
longer  dared.  Besides,  in  the  future 
there  was  light.  In  some  ray  of  it  she 
must  have  walked,  for  when  at  the  foot 
of  Mount  Taurus,  in  a  little  Cappa- 
docian  village,  years  later,  she  died,  it 
was  at  the  sign  of  the  cross. 


1.55 


IX 

THE  AGONY 

The  high  virtues  are  not  complai- 
sant, it  is  the  cad  the  canaille  adore.  In 
spite  of  everything,  Nero  had  been  be- 
loved by  the  masses.  For  years  there 
were  roses  on  his  tomb.  Under  Vespa- 
sian there  was  an  impostor  whom  Greece 
and  Asia  acclaimed  in  his  name.  The 
memory  of  his  festivals  was  unforget- 
able ;  regret  for  him  refused  to  be  stilled. 
He  was  more  than  a  god;  he  was  a  tra- 
dition. His  second  advent  was  con- 
fidently expected;  the  Jews  believed  in 
his  resurrection ;  to  the  Christian  he  had 
never  died,  and  suddenly  he  reappeared. 

Rome  had  declined  to  accept  the  old 
world  tenet  that  the  soul  has  its  avatars, 
yet,  when  Commodus  sauntered  from 
that  distant  sepulchre,  Into  which, 
poison  aiding,  he  had  placed  his  puta- 
156 


THE    AGONY 

tive  father,  Rome  felt  that  the  Egyp- 
tians were  wiser  than  they  looked;  that 
the  soul  did  migrate,  and  that  in  the  blue 
eyes  of  the  young  emperor  Nero's  spirit 
shone. 

Herodian,  who  has  written  very  agree- 
ably on  the  subject,  describes  him  as 
another  Prince  Charming.  His  hair, 
which  was  very  fair,  glistened  like  gold 
in  the  sun ;  he  was  slender,  not  at  all 
effeminate,  exceedingly  graceful,  exceed- 
ingly gracious;  endowed  with  the 
promptest  blush,  with  the  best  inten- 
tions ;  studious  of  the  interests  of  his 
people ;  glad  of  advice,  seeking  it  even ; 
courteous  and  deferential  to  the  senate 
and  his  father's  friends — in  short,  an 
adolescent  Nero — a  trifle  more  guileful, 
however;  already  a  parricide,  a  come- 
dian as  well ;  one  who  in  a  moment  would 
toss  the  mask  aside  and  disclose  the  mon- 
grel; the  offspring,  not  of  an  empress 
and  an  emperor,  but  the  tiger-cub  that 
Faustine  had  got  by  a  gladiator. 

The  tender-hearted  philosopher,  who 
in  a  campaign  against  some  fretful 
157 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

Teutons,  had  taken  Commodus  with 
him,  knew  that  he  was  not  his  son ;  knew, 
too,  when  the  agony  seized  him,  from 
whose  hand  the  agony  came ;  but  in 
earlier  hfe  he  had  jotted  in  his  note- 
book, "  Forgive,  forgive  always ;  die 
forgiving " ;  and,  as  he  forgave  the 
mother,  so  he  forgave  the  child,  recom- 
mending him  with  his  last  breath  to  the 
army  and  to  Rome. 

As  the  people  had  loved  Nero,  so  did 
the  aristocracy  love  Marcus  Aurelius ; 
his  foster-father  Antonin  excepted,  he 
was  the  only  gentleman  that  had  sat  on 
the  throne.  No  wonder  they  loved  him ; 
and  seeing  this  early  edition  of  the 
prince  in  the  fairy  tale  emerge  from  the 
bogs  of  Germany,  his  fair  face  haloed 
by  the  glisten  and  gold  of  his  hair, 
hearts  went  out  to  him ;  the  wish  of  his 
putative  father  was  ratified,  and  the  son 
of  a  gladiator  was  emperor  of  Rome. 

Lampridus — or  Spartian  was  it  ?  The 
title-page  bears  Lampridus'  name,  but 
there  is  some  doubt  as  to  the  author- 
ship. However,  whoever  made  the 
158 


THE    AGONY 

abridgment  of  the  life  of  Commodus 
which  appears  among  the  chronicles  of 
the  Scriptores  Historke  Augustce,  says 
that  before  his  birth  Faustine  dreamed 
she  had  engendered  a  serpent.  It  is  not 
impossible  that  Faustine  had  been  read- 
ing Ctzias,  and  had  stumbled  over  his 
account  of  the  Martichoras,  a  serpent 
with  a  woman's  face  and  the  talons  of  a 
bird  of  prey.  For  it  was  that  she  con- 
ceived. 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have 
seen  that  young  man,  the  mask  removed, 
frightening  the  senate  into  calling  Rome 
Commodia,  and  then  in  a  linen  robe 
promenading  in  the  attributes  of  a  priest 
of  Anubis  through  a  seraglio  of  six 
hundred  girls  and  mignons  embracing 
as  he  passed.  There  was  a  spectacle, 
which  Nero  had  not  imagined.  But 
Nero  was  vieux  jeu.  Commodus  outdid 
him,  first  in  debauchery,  then  in  the 
arena.  Nero  had  died  while  in  training 
to  kill  a  lion ;  Commodus  did  not  take 
the  trouble  to  train.  It  was  the  lions 
that  were  trained,  not  he.  A  skin  on 
159 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

his  shoulders,  a  ckib  in  his  hand,  he  de- 
scended naked  into  the  ring,  and  there 
felled  beasts  and  men.  Then,  acclaimed 
as  Hercules,  he  returned  to  the  pulvina, 
and  a  mignon  on  one  side,  a  mistress  on 
the  other,  ordered  the  guard  to  mas- 
sacre the  spectators  and  set  fire  to  Rome. 
After  entering  the  arena  six  or  seven 
hundred  times,  and  there  vanquishing 
men  whose  eyes  had  been  put  out  and 
whose  legs  were  tied,  the  colossal  statue 
which  Nero  had  made  after  his  own 
image  was  altered ;  to  the  top  came  the 
bust  of  Commodus,  to  the  base  this 
legend:  The  victor  of  ten  thousand 
gladiators^  Commodus-Hercvles,  Im- 
perator. 

Meanwhile  conspirators  were  at  work. 
Like  Nero,  Commodus  could  have  sought 
in  vain  for  a  friend.  His  life  was  at- 
tempted again  and  again ;  he  escaped, 
but  never  the  plotters;  only  when  they 
had  gone  there  were  more.  He  knew  he 
was  doomed.  There  was  the  usual 
comet;  the  statue  of  Hercules  had  per- 
spired visibly;  an  owl  had  been  caught 
160 


THE    AGONY 

above  his  bedroom,  and  once  he  had 
wiped  in  his  hair  the  hand  which  he  had 
plunged  in  the  warm  wound  of  a  glad- 
iator, dead  at  his  feet.  These  omens 
could  mean  but  one  thing.  None  the 
less,  if  he  were  doomed,  so  were  others. 
One  da}'^  one  of  those  miserable  children 
that  the  emperors  kept  about  them 
found  a  tablet.  It  was  as  good  as  any- 
thing else  to  play  with ;  and,  as  the  child 
tossed  it  through  the  hall,  the  one  wo- 
man that  had  loved  Commodus  caught  it 
and  read  on  it  that  she  and  all  the 
household  were  to  die.  Within  an  hour 
Commodus  was  killed. 

There  is  a  page  in  Lampridus,  which 
he  quotes  as  coming  from  the  lost  chron- 
icles of  Marius  Maximus,  and  which 
contains  the  joy  of  the  senate  at  the 
news.  It  is  too  long  for  transcription, 
but  as  a  bit  of  realism  it  is  unique. 
There  is  a  shiver  in  every  line.  You 
hear  the  voices  of  hundreds,  dinink  with 
fury,  frenzied  with  delight ;  the  fierce 
welcome  that  greeted  Pertinax — a, 
161 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

slave's  grandson,  who  was  emperor  for  a 
minute — the  joy  of  hate  assuaged. 

The  delight  of  the  senate  was  not 
shared  by  the  pretorians.  Pertinax  was 
promptly  massacred ;  the  throne  was  put 
up  at  auction ;  there  were  two  or  three 
emperors  at  once,  and  presently  the 
purple  was  seized  by  Septimus  Severus, 
a  rigid,  white-haired  disciplinarian,  who, 
in  his  admiration  for  Marcus  Aurelius, 
founded  that  second  dynasty  of  the  An- 
tonins  with  which  antiquity  may  be  said 
to  end. 

When  he  had  gone,  his  elder  son,  Bas- 
tian,  renamed  Aurelius  Antonin,  and 
because  of  a  cloak  he  had  invented  nick- 
named Caracalla,  bounded  like  a  panther 
on  the  throne.  In  a  moment  he  was 
gnawing  at  his  brother's  throat,  and  im- 
mediately there  occurred  a  massacre 
such  as  Rome  had  never  seen.  Xiphilin 
says  the  nights  were  not  long  enough  to 
kill  all  of  the  condemned.  Twenty  thou- 
sand people  were  slaughtered  in  twenty 
hours.  The  streets  were  emptied,  the 
theatres  closed. 

162 


THE   AGONY 

The  blood  that  ran  then  must  have 
been  in  rillets  too  thin  to  slake  Cara- 
calla's  thirst,  for  simultaneously  almost, 
he  was  in  Gaul,  in  Dacia — wherever 
there  was  prey.  African  by  his  father, 
Syrian  on  his  mother's  side,  Caracalla 
was  not  a  panther  merely ;  he  was  a  herd 
of  them.  He  had  the  cruelty,  the 
treachery  and  guile  of  a  wilderness  of 
tiger-cats.  No  man,  said  a  thinker,  is 
wholly  base.  Caracalla  was.  He  had 
not  a  taste,  not  a  vice,  even,  which 
was  not  washed  and  rewashed  in 
blood.  In  a  moment  of  excitement 
Commodus  set  his  guards  on  the 
spectators  in  the  amphitheatre;  the 
damage  was  slight,  for  the  Colosseum 
was  so  constructed  that  in  two  minutes 
the  eighty  or  ninety  thousand  people 
which  it  held  could  escape.  Caracalla 
had  the  exits  closed.  Those  who  escaped 
were  naked;  to  bribe  the  guards  they 
were  forced  to  strip  themselves  to  the 
skin.  In  the  circus  a  vestal  caught  his 
eye.  He  tried  to  violate  her,  and  failing 
impotently,had  her  buried  alive.  "Cara- 
163 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

calla  knows  that  I  am  a  virgin,  and 
knows  why,"  the  girl  cried  as  the  earth 
swallowed  her,  but  there  was  no  one 
there  to  aid. 

Such  things  show  the  trend  of  a  tem- 
perament, though  not,  perhaps,  its 
force.  Presently  the  latter  was  dis- 
played. For  years  those  arch-enemies  of 
Rome,  the  unconquerable  Parthians,  had 
been  quiet ;  bound,  too,  by  treaties  which 
held  Rome's  honor.  Not  Caracalla's, 
however;  he  had  none.  An  embassy 
went  out  to  Artobane,  the  king.  Cara- 
calla  wished  a  bride,  and  what  fairer  one 
could  he  have  than  the  child  of  the  Par- 
thian monarch  ?  Then,  too,  the  embassy 
was  charged  to  explain,  the  marriage  of 
Rome  and  Parthia  would  be  the  union  of 
the  Orient  and  the  Occident,  peace  by 
land  and  sea.  Artobane  hesitated,  and 
with  cause;  but  Caracalla  wooed  so  ar- 
dently that  finally  the  king  said  yes. 

The  news  went  abroad.  The  Par- 
thians, delighted,  prepared  to  receive  the 
emperor.  When  Caracalla  crossed  the 
Tigris,  the  highroad  that  led  to  the  cap- 
164 


THE    AGONY 

ital  was  strewn  with  sacrifices,  with 
altars  covered  with  flowers,  with  welcom- 
ings  of  every  kind.  Caracalla  was 
visibly  pleased.  Beyond  the  gates  of  the 
capital,  there  was  the  king;  he  had  ad- 
vanced to  greet  his  son-in-law,  and  that 
the  greeting  might  be  effective,  he  had 
assembled  his  nobles  and  his  troops.  The 
latter  were  armed  with  cymbals,  with 
hautbois,  and  with  flutes ;  and  as  Cara- 
calla and  his  army  approached,  there 
was  music,  dancing  and  song;  there 
were  libations  too,  and  as  the  day  was 
practically  the  wedding  of  East  and 
West,  there  was  not  a  weapon  to  be  seen 
— gala  robes  merely,  brilliant  and  long. 
Caracalla  saluted  the  king,  gave  an 
order  to  an  adjutant,  and  on  the  smil- 
ing defenceless  Parthians  the  Roman 
eagles  pounced.  Those  who  were  not 
killed  were  made  prisoners  of  war.  The 
next  day  Caracalla  withdrew,  charged 
with  booty,  firing  cities  as  he  went. 

A   little   before,    rumor   reached   him 
that  a  group  of  the  citizens  of  Alexan- 
dria had  referred  to  him  as  a  fratricide. 
165 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

After  the  adventure  in  Parthia  he  be- 
thought him  of  the  city  which  Alexander 
had  founded,  and  of  the  temple  of  Ser- 
apis  that  was  there.  He  wished  to  honor 
both,  he  declared,  and  presently  he  was 
at  the  gates.  The  people  were  en- 
chanted ;  the  avenues  were  strewn  with 
flowers,  lined  with  musicians.  There 
were  illuminations,  festivals,  sacrifices, 
torrents  of  perfumes,  and  through  it  all 
Caracalla  passed,  a  legion  at  his  heels. 
To  see  him,  to  participate  in  the  succes- 
sion of  prodigalities,  the  surrounding 
country  flocked  there  too.  In  recogni- 
tion of  the  courtesy  with  which  he  was 
received,  Caracalla  gave  a  banquet  to 
the  magnates  and  the  clergy.  Before 
his  guests  could  leave  him  they  were 
killed.  Through  the  streets  the  legion 
was  at  work.  Alexandria  was  turned 
into  a  cemetery.  Herodian  states  that 
the  carnage  was  so  great  that  the  Nile 
was  red  to  its  mouth. 

In  Rome  at  that  time  was  a  prefect, 
Macrin  by  name,  who  had  dreamed  the 
purple  would  be  his.     He  was  a  swarthy 
166 


THE    AGONY 

liar,  and  his  promises  were  such  that  the 
pretorians  were  willing  that  the  dream 
should  come  true.  Emissaries  were  des- 
patched, and  Caracalla  was  stabbed.  In 
his  luggage  poison  was  found  to  the 
value  of  five  million  five  hundred  thou- 
sand drachma?.  What  fresh  turpitude  he 
was  devising  no  one  knew,  and  the  dis- 
covery might  serve  as  an  epitaph,  were 
it  not  that  by  his  legions  he  was  adored. 
No  one  had  abandoned  to  the  army  such 
booty  as  he. 

Meanwhile,  in  a  chapel  at  Emissa, 
a  boy  was  dancing  indolently  to  the  kiss 
of  flutes.  A  handful  of  Caracalla's  sol- 
diers passed  that  way,  and  thought  him 
Bacchus.  In  his  face  was  the  enigmatic 
beauty  of  gods  and  girls — the  charm  of 
the  dissolute  and  the  wayward  height- 
ened by  the  divine.  On  his  head  was  a 
diadem;  his  frail  tunic  was  of  purple 
and  gold,  but  the  sleeves,  after  the 
Phoenician  fashion,  were  wide,  and  he 
was  shod  with  a  thin  white  leather  that 
reached  to  the  thighs.  He  was  fourteen, 
and  priest  of  the  Sun.  The  chapel  was 
167 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

roomy  and  rich.  There  was  no  statue — 
a  black  phallus  merely,  which  had  fallen 
from  above,  and  on  which,  if  you  looked 
closely,  you  could  see  the  image  of 
Elagabal,  the  Sun. 

The  rumor  of  his  beauty  brought 
other  soldiers  that  way,  and  the  lad, 
feeling  that  Rome  was  there,  ceased  to 
dance,  strolling  through  pauses  of  the 
worship,  a  troop  of  galli  at  his  heels, 
surveying  the  intruders  with  querulous, 
feminine  eyes. 

Presently  a  whisper  filtered  that  the 
lad  was  Caracalla's  son.  There  were 
centurions  there  that  remembered  Semia- 
mire,  the  lad's  mother,  very  well;  they 
had  often  seen  her,  a  superb  creature 
with  scorching  eyes,  before  whom  fire 
had  been  carried  as  though  she  were  em- 
press. It  was  she  who  had  put  it  beyond 
Caracalla's  power  to  violate  that  vestal 
when  he  tried.  She  was  his  cousin ;  her 
life  had  been  passed  at  court;  it  was 
Macrin  who  had  exiled  her.  And  with 
the  whisper  filtered  another — that  she 
was  rich;  that  she  had  lumps  of  gold, 
168 


THE    AGONY 

which  slie  would  give  gladly  to  whomso 
aided  in  placing  her  Antonin  on  the 
throne.  There  were  gossips  who  said 
ill-natured  things  of  this  lady ;  who  in- 
sinuated that  she  had  so  many  lovers 
that  she  herself  could  not  tell  who  was 
the  father  of  her  child;  but  the  lumps 
of  gold  had  a  language  of  their  own. 
The  disbanded  army  espoused  the  young 
priest's  cause;  there  was  a  skirmish, 
Macrin  was  killed,  and  Heliogabalus 
was  emperor  of  Rome. 

"  I  would  never  have  written  the  life 
of  this  Antonin  Impurissimus,"  said 
Lampridus,  "  were  it  not  that  he  had 
predecessors."  Even  in  Latin  the  task 
was  difficult.  In  English  it  is  impos- 
sible. There  are  subjects  that  permit 
of  a  hint,  particularly  if  it  be  masked 
to  the  teeth,  but  there  are  others  that 
no  art  can  drape.  "  The  inexpressible 
does  not  exist,"  Gautier  remarked,  when 
he  finished  a  notorious  romance,  nor  does 
it ;  but  even  his  pen  would  have  balked 
had  he  tried  it  on  Heliogabalus. 

In  his  work  on  the  Caesars,  Suetonius 
169 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

drew  breath  but  once — he  called  Nero  a 
monster.  Subsequently  he  must  have 
regretted  having  done  so,  not  because 
Nero  was  not  a  monster,  but  because  it 
was  sufficient  to  display  the  beast  with- 
out adding  a  descriptive  placard.  In 
that  was  Suetonius'  advantage ;  he  could 
describe.  Nowadays  a  writer  may  not, 
or  at  least  not  Heliogabalus.  It  is  not 
merely  that  he  was  depraved,  for  all  of 
that  lot  were;  it  was  that  he  made  de- 
pravity a  pursuit;  and,  the  purple 
favoring,  carried  it  not  only  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  imaginable,  but  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  real.  At  the  feet  of  that 
painted  boy,  Elephantis  and  Parrhasius 
could  have  sat  and  learned  a  lesson. 
Apart  from  that  phase  of  his  sover- 
eignty, he  was  a  little  Sardanapalus,  an 
Asiatic  mignon,  who  found  himself 
great. 

It  would  have  been  curious  to  have 
seen  him  in  that  wonderful  palace, 
clothed  like  a  Persian  queen,  insisting 
that  he  should  be  addressed  as  Impera- 
trix,  and  quite  living  up  to  the  title. 
170 


THE    AGONY 

It  would  not  only  be  interesting,  it 
would  give  one  an  insight  into  just  how 
much  the  Romans  could  stand.  It  would 
have  been  curious,  also,  to  have  assisted 
at  that  superb  and  poetic  ceremonial,  in 
which,  having  got  Tanit  from  Carthage 
as  consort  for  Elagabal,  he  presided, 
girt  with  the  pomp  of  church  and  state, 
over  the  nuptials  of  the  Sun  and  Moon. 
He  had  read  Suetonius,  and  not  an 
eccentricity  of  the  Caesars  escaped  him. 
He  would  not  hunt  flies  by  the  hour,  as 
Domitian  had  done,  for  that  would  be 
mere  imitation;  but  he  could  collect 
cobwebs,  and  he  did,  by  the  ton.  Calig- 
ula and  Vitellius  had  been  famous  as 
hosts,  but  the  feasts  that  Heliogabalus 
gave  outranked  them  for  sheer  splendor. 
From  panels  in  the  ceiling  such  masses 
of  flowers  fell  that  guests  were  smoth- 
ered. Those  that  survived  had  set  be- 
fore them  glass  game  and  sweets  of 
crystal.  The  menu  was  embroidered  on 
the  table-cloth — not  the  mere  list  of 
dishes,  but  pictures  drawn  with  the 
needle  of  the  dishes  themselves.  And 
171 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

presently,  after  the  little  jest  in  glass 
had  been  enjoyed,  you  were  served  with 
camel's  heels;  combs  torn  from  living 
cocks ;  platters  of  nightingale  tongues ; 
ostrich  brains,  prepared  with  that  garum 
sauce  which  the  Sybarites  invented,  and 
of  wliich  the  secret  is  lost;  therewith 
were  peas  and  grains  of  gold ;  beans  and 
amber  peppered  with  pearl  dust;  lentils 
and  rubies ;  spiders  in  jelly ;  lion's  dung, 
served  in  pastry.  The  guests  that  wine 
overcame  were  carried  to  bedrooms. 
When  they  awoke,  there  staring  at  them 
were  tigers  and  leopards — tame,  of 
course;  but  some  of  the  guests  were 
stupid  enough  not  to  know  it,  and  died 
of  fright. 

All  this  was  of  a  nature  to  amuse  a 
lad  who  had  made  the  phallus  the  chief 
object  of  worship;  who  had  banished 
Jupiter,  dismissed  Isis ;  who,  over  paths 
that  were  strewn  with  lilies,  had  himself, 
in  the  attributes  of  Bacchus,  drawn  by 
tigers ;  by  lions  as  Mother  of  the  Gods ; 
again,  by  naked  women,  as  Heliogabalus 
172 


THE    AGONY 

on  his  way  to  wed  a  vestal,  and  procure 
for  the  empire  a  child  that  should  be 
wholly  divine. 

It  amused  Rome,  too,  and  his  pro- 
digalities in  the  circus  were  such  that 
Lampridus  admits  that  the  people  were 
glad  he  was  emperor.  Neither  Caligula 
nor  Nero  had  been  as  lavish,  and  neither 
Caligula  nor  Nero  as  cruel.  The  atro- 
cities he  committed,  if  less  vast  than 
those  of  Caracalla's,  were  more  acute. 
Domitian  even  was  surpassed  in  the  tor- 
tures invented  by  a  boy,  so  dainty  that 
he  never  used  the  same  garments,  the 
same  shoes,  the  same  jewels,  the  same 
woman  twice. 

In  spite  of  this,  or  perhaps  precisely 
on  that  account,  the  usual  conspirators 
were  at  work,  and  one  day  this  little 
painted  girl,  who  had  prepared  several 
devices  for  a  unique  and  splendid  sui- 
cide, was  taken  unawares  and  tossed  in 
the  latrinas. 

In  him  the  glow  of  the  purple  reached 
its  apogee.  Rome  had  been  watching  a 
173 


IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

crescendo  that  had  mounted  with  the 
years.  Its  culmination  was  in  that 
hermaphrodite.  But  the  tension  had 
been  too  great — something  snapped; 
there  was  nothing  left — a  procession  of 
colorless  bandits  merely,  Thracians, 
Gauls,  Pannonians,  Dalmatians,  Goths, 
women  even,  with  Attila  for  a  climax 
and  the  refurbishing  of  the  world. 

Rome  was  still  mistress,  but  she  was 
growing  very  old.  She  had  conquered 
step  by  step.  When  one  nation  had 
fallen,  she  garrotted  another.  To  van- 
quish her,  the  earth  had  to  produce  not 
only  new  races,  but  new  creeds.  The 
parturitions,  as  we  know,  were  success- 
ful. Already  the  blue,  victorious  eyes 
of  Vandal  and  of  Goth  were  peering 
down  at  Rome;  already  they  had  whis- 
pered together,  and  over  the  hydromel 
had  drunk  to  her  fall.  The  earth's  new 
children  fell  upon  her,  not  one  by  one, 
but  all  at  once,  and  presently  the  co- 
lossus tottered,  startling  the  universe 
with  the  uproar  of  her  agony ;  calling  to 
174 


THE    AGONY 

gods  that  had  vacated  the  skies ;  calling 
to  Jupiter ;  calling  to  Isis ;  calling  in 
vain.  Where  the  thunderbolt  had 
gleamed,  a  crucifix  stood.  On  the 
shoulders  of  a  prelate  was  the  purple 
that  had  dazzled  the  world. 


175 


CENTRAL  UN  AA    000  911302    8 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


NOV  22  1972 

NOV  2  R  RfHTi 

JUN  8     1973. 

JUN    ^  \J  RBCll 

JtiN  1 3  '9S I 

JUN  09  1981 

■'■  1TO:'#«  TBttL 

C/39 

UCSD  Libr. 

BKESTANO'S 
Uookaellers  &  Station 


